written by Miha Dešman

 

Quid tum? What next? asks Leon Battista Alberti on a famous medal cast by Matteo di Pasti around 1450. Alberti’s question: ‘What next?’ is, according to Jarzombek[1], associated with the awareness that the centre had been lost in Renaissance culture and architecture, after a long period of the complete domination of Christianity.It is about the transfer from the condition of innocence of pure faith towards scepticism, from blissful naiveté towards the comprehension that the idea of God as an almighty architect and provider of order in creation and society has irreversibly been lost. Alberti is one of the initiators of the process, which, through the Enlightenment, led to a modern world.



[1] Mark Jarzombek, On Leon Baptista Alberti: His Literary and Aesthetic Theories, The MIT Press, 1989