Alberti’s smaller studies, pioneering in their field,…

Alberti’s smaller studies, pioneering in their field, include a treatise in cryptography, De componendis cifris, in which he describes a cipher disk capable of enciphering a small code, and the first Italian grammar.

With the Florentine cosmographer Paolo Toscanelli he collaborates in astronomy, a close science to geography at this time, and produces a small Latin work on geography, Descriptio urbis Romae (The Panorama of the City of Rome).

Just a few years before his death, Alberti completes De iciarchia (On Ruling the Household), a dialogue about Florence during Medici rule.