Treatise De Statua by Leon Battista Alberti: Translation, Commentary and Notes

• Grant number: 23/07822-8
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Effective date (Start): October 01, 2023
• Effective date (End): September 30, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Classical Literatures
• Principal Investigator: Paulo Martins
• Grantee: Michael dos Santos Sanches
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The present research proposes to do an academic translation with introduction, notes, and comments of the Renaissance treatise De Statua by the Italian polymath Leon Battista Alberti. Originally written in Latin, De Statua is characterized as a practical guide to understand the principles of statuary, mainly those regarding anthropometry, according to the sculptural standards of the Italian Renaissance, which, in turn, emulate the models of the Graeco-Roman Antiquity. The commentary, which follows the translation, is focused on the argumentative analysis and the text division in view of the rhetorical precepts and the elements both of Alberti's style of writing and intrinsic to the "treatise" genre, besides proposing a bibliographical review of Alberti's works as well as those from modern scholars who addressed the matter. The footnotes will be regarding philological and hermeneutic issues as well as elucidations about the translation. At the end, we also propose to develop a lexicon of technical and Albertian terms included in the treatise that could potentially help not just readers of De Statua but also from other works of the same author.