Diálogos entre antigos e modernos: a recepção da antiguidade clássica no Sobre a família de Leon Battista Alberti.

Abstract

The present paper seeks to analyze the presence of the ancient world in the work On the Family, written by the Florentine Leon Battista Alberti, in the fifteenth century. On the Family is constituted as a civic manual developed with the intent of formulating a famil y model considered useful for the Florence of the Quattrocento period. I n a first moment, we discussed about the concept of family in ancient times, taking into consideration its ambiguity and artificiality, as well as how the discourse on the importance of the family was constructed for conserving the city values. We mapped elements of the Greco-Roman world that serve to justify the family model proposed by the referred humanist. In the same way, we questioned to what extent the topics pointed by the historiography of Ancient Rome are appropriated with the intention of instilling in the Florentine citizen an appreciation for virtue. At last, we will analyze how antiquity is received in poster periods of time. We seek to perceive how the past (antiquity) may suggest something in a given present time (the fifteenth century).