Alberti was possibly in Rome by 1431; Mancini speculates by 1428. The Curia employed composers and authors and editors of papal bulls, and Alberti was employed as such. Recreated in visual topography by Poggio and Flavio, Rome’s surviving monuments would advance Alberti’s dynamic visual encounters. Giotto’s and Cavallini’s formative works in Rome further endowed the spatial avant-garde in the city of Gentile, Pisano, Masaccio, Masolino, Ghiberti, and Donatello. The textual and visual gifts gleaned from Padua, Bologna, and northern Europe would evolve into Rome’s validation of all prescriptions in De pictura.

Alberti never mentions Florence in De pictura. This is intentional as the tract not so much ignores as merely suggests previous periods of art, and Alberti’s refusal to specify those interludes, such as Romanesque, Gothic, or medieval, reflects the need for a humanist audience to have all precepts couched in the domain of antiquity. His cryptic indication of sources consequently demands forensic scrutiny of his visual paradigm before Florence. The text itself invites this. In the face of no hard evidence or documentation, Alberti’s claim in De pictura to be an ostensible painter begs the query as to where or with whom he began his study of draftsmanship, either in the studio or in practice. Although he had left Padua for Bologna by 1420, conjecture suggests that while in Padua he may have seen and even studied the art of genius before and contemporary to his age.

We will turn now to two symbolic images: The allegory of Injustice in the Arena Chapel (Padua) by Giotto di Bondone (1303–1305) and the allegory of War in the Palazzo Pubblico (Siena) by Ambrogio Lorenzetti (1338–1339). They are major milestones in the visualization of rape in European art, condemnatory representations intended for a public audience. Despite the extensive secondary literature on these sites, the representations of sexual violence have never been examined or compared to each other, even in specialist studies. They can potentially reconfigure our views of wartime rape before modernity.

Florentines saw their excellence in visual arts as part of their identity. Giorgio Vasari encouraged many colleagues to think seriously about the study of the arts by seeking collaboration for the two editions of his monumental work Lives of the Artists. Borghini, Giambullari, Bartoli, and many others assisted in gathering information; Borghini in particular was involved in composing the sections on periodization. It resembled the narrative on language; the term “ancient” was relevant until late antiquity. The rise of the new tradition had its earliest origins in the eleventh century. It blossomed in the age of Giotto, a narrative that already had a tradition of its own. Innovation in the arts was driven, they argued, by the artist’s drive to compete and to excel. Artistic traditions themselves, like language, could be compared to a living being with a natural lifespan. Florentines founded an academy for artists, the Accademia del Disegno; its first collective task was the memorial service for Michelangelo.