Abstract
In this article I inquire into Alberti's claim that his treatise, De Pictura (1435), offers a totally new treatment of painting. I argue that the rationale behind Alberti's self-promoting claim derives from his perception of historia, and from his conceptualization of the relationship between this pictorial genre and nature. The historia is not a depiction of the natural, the contingent and the temporal: The nature that Alberti uses for his historia is an ideal nature that cannot, in fact, be observed in nature. Alberti's historia deconstructs natural reality in an attempt to reconstruct the unobservable, fixed principles which lie behind the surface of the visible world. I would also argue, however, that Alberti's historia is neither a mere representation of ideal truths. Rather, it is the means to construct a fixed and ideal social reality. Alberti's historia is not meant to convey a meaning, but rather to create a reality; it is not a representation of an action, but the execution and performance of one. Alberti promotes the use of an artificial system of signs, linear perspective, in order to promote controlled social interactions that in their turn will create an ideal social artifact: a decorous community.
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