Leone Battista Alberti

Leon Battista Alberti (February 18, 1404 – April 25, 1472) was an Italian author, artist, architect, poet, priest, linguist, philosopher, and cryptographer, and general Renaissance humanist polymath. In Italy, this first name is usually spelled "Leone", but Alberti is known as Leon. Alberti's life was described in Giorgio Vasari's "Vite". 
Alberti is often seen as a model of the Renaissance "universal man“.-
He was born in Genoa, because the Albertis had been expelled from their native city, Florence.  When he was a child the family moved to Venice. In 1428 Leon visited Florence at first time.