Leon Battista Alberti was an Italian author, artist, architect, poet, priest, linguist, philosopher, and cryptographer, and general Renaissance humanist polymath. An Italian humanist, Alberti is often seen as a model of the Renaissance "universal man".

Alberti's approach to architecture was to pay tribute to ancient Roman design. He also chose to combine form and function, as an example, he used columns as they were originally intended; as load-bearing support in the Church of Sant'Andrea, rather than as decoration and several of the church façades he designed were based on Roman era architecture.

A humanist, like many of his peers, his intent was to design buildings that would illicit emotion as well as reason.