A “Transferrer" of the Classics

The Reception of Cicero's Brutus by the Humanist Leon Battista Alberti

Abstract

This article aims to carry out two investigative procedures regarding the relationship between Ciceronian rhetoric and the work of Leon Battista Alberti in the Italian Renaissance of the Quattrocento: (1) to analyze the Genoese humanist’s relationship with Cicero’s works; and (2) to present three occurrences illustrating how Alberti received and incorporated the Brutus – a text that remained little known from the end of Antiquity and throughout the Middle Ages – into several of his own works.The first procedure seeks to identify what Alberti incorporated and what he rejected from Ciceronian rhetoric, both in terms of content and style. Although he was demonstrably an assiduous reader of Cicero – as evidenced by the few surviving volumes from his private library, as well as by direct and indirect references to the orator in his writings – Alberti did not adopt a Ciceronian style of language. Nevertheless, he evoked Cicero in other ways, especially through the Brutus, the focus of the second investigative procedure. This second stage examines excerpts from works such as Intercœnales, Apologhi, and Profugiorum ab ærumna, in which the influence of the dialogue is perceptible. Following these two procedures, it is concluded that, although Alberti was not Ciceronian in his style, he organically incorporated and assimilated the content of Cicero’s works into his own intellectual production.