
Leon Battista Alberti
The Renaissance architect whose treatise On Painting asked for a figure in the scene who shows us how to feel.
Books
On Painting1435His short treatise on perspective and composition, and on how a picture should move the people who look at it.
Mentioned in

How do you paint loneliness?
How do you paint sadness and loneliness with no face and no symbol? From Bruegel’s Icarus to Picasso’s blue and Friedrich’s ship, and why every viewer finishes a painting with their own life.