RENAISSANCE VISUAL TREASURY

„Our Ancestors have left us many and various Arts tending to the Pleasure and Conveniency of Life, acquired with the greatest Industry and Diligence:Which Arts, though they all pretend, with a Kind of Emulation, to have in View the great End of being serviceable to Mankind; yet we know that each of them in particular has something in it that seems to promise a distinct and separate Fruit: Some Arts we follow for Necessity, some we approve for their Usefulness, and some we esteem because they lead us to the Knowledge of Things that are delightful.” // Leon Battista Alberti: The Ten Books of Architecture. Preface (detail), printed by Edward Owen, London 1755