Tessere di enciclopedismo albertiano

The essay investigates the classical sources of Leon Battista Alberti’s works from a philological and critical point of view. Starting from Alberti’s own words on the value of classical heritage, his habits as a reader, through the re-functionalization of authors like Terenzio, Plauto – with a special mention of the relation between Alberti and Latin comic production ‒ and Cicero, what this article points out is the interdisciplinarity of his interests and subjects. Differently from other humanists, Alberti did not collect texts for pure bibliophilism but as a moment of creation of new knowledge, valuable for his intrinsic impact on res and verba.