Pulchritudo and ornamentum, naked beauty and ornamental beauty: the legacy of Leon Battista Alberti

Abstract

In his treatises dedicated to the Arts, Alberti develops a notion of beauty that distinguishes an innate beauty, pulchritudo, and a form of auxiliary light and a complement to beauty, the ornamentum. The former, intrinsic to the conformation of the buildings, receives the addition of ornaments as garments that clothe the naked body. The notion is guided by the principle of decorum, a parameter which is the foundation of beauty and that regulates the ornaments.

Considering the implication of such principles, Alberti prescribes the appropriate ornaments to each genre of building, but he also suggests that the work ought to be constructed naked and only later clothed. Although the author´s asseverations indicate that the state of nudity should be temporary, the appreciation of a kind of beauty inherent to the structure of edifices find peculiar resonances still during the Renaissance, as seen in the buildings projected by Francesco di Giorgio during his stay at the court of Urbino.

In the treatises of the Cinquecento, too, one may find notions that lead to Alberti as undoubtedly albertian is the idea of order as adherent ornament which Serlio and Vignola share with their contemporaries and around which much of the architectural debate since the fifteenth century is focused.

This work aims to examine such fundamental questions concerning the notions of beauty indebted to Alberti´s precepts.