Views of Rome

摘要

The year 2005 saw Alberti's 600th birthday. To celebrate, there was a splendid exhibition entitled 'Rome of Leon Battista Alberti' at the Palazzo Caffarelli on the Capitoline Hill. It began at a breezy window providing a wide view of the city itself. On the floor below there was a carefully aligned map, and on the adjacent wall some text from Alberti's short Latin work, Panorama of the City of Rome. This mise-en-scene recalled the famous moment in the 1440s when the ambitious young humanist and antiquarian surveyed the city from a nearby tower. Not for him the subjective sketch; his method was resolutely scientific. Employing an instrument of his own devising -essentially a disc divided around the rim into 48°, with a graduated ruler pivoting at the centre - he plotted the precise polar coordinates of walls, gates, churches and other prominent landmarks. He did not go on to draft and publish a map, as one might expect, but instead provided his readers with the resulting tables of numbers. In other words, he gave them a cartographic database. Just by reading the Panorama, he boasted, 'anyone, even if of only modest intelligence', could construct an accurate picture of the city 'on whatever surface he wishes'. Alberti was doing computer graphics before the computer.