Leon Battista Alberti born in Genoa in 1404, was son of Lorenzo Alberti, a wealthy Florentine who at the time had been exiled from his own city. It is unknown who his mother is, but it is believed that Alberti could have been an illegitimate child of a Bolognese widow. His father’s family were very successful in banking and commercial business but they had also started to get involved in politics which turned disastrous and caused the family to be exiled from Florence. Battista Alberti’s father was still able to continue his wealthy lifestyle in Genova within a local branch of the family firm where he educated Alberti in mathematics, although shortly after, when a plague struck Genoa they moved to Venice where Alberti and his elder brother
