Around the year 1350, a few elite men in what is now Italy felt a conscious shift in lifestyle. Instead of being humble and unexceptional, these people strived for personal excellence, to develop their talents and show the world how great they were. This time period came to be known as the Renaissance. The four traits that define a Renaissance Man are individualism, humanism, secularism, and critical spirit. One person who lived during the Renaissance was Leon Battista Alberti. Leon Alberti, described as "A scholar-humanist, mathematician, and musician", is a good example of a Renaissance Man. He was athletically gifted, bright, spent his life gathering knowledge, and was not the least bit ashamed to tell the world about it.
Leon Alberti was a very individualistic person. Individualism is to strive for personal excellence, to maximize talents, and to be arrogant about it. Leon Alberti has a lot of individualistic qualities. For one, he published an autobiography, where he boasted about all his great qualities. In this autobiography he claimed he had almost no equal in throwing the lance, could shoot an arrow through any iron breastplate, could ride any horse, and jump over a mans shoulders with both feet together! Leon Alberti also wrote that he was a self-taught, accomplished musician. He wrote, "He (I) learned music without teachers, and his (I) compositions were approved by learned musicians." On top of all this, Leon Alberti's autobiography was written in a rather pretentious tone. At one point he wrote, " he could ride his horse violently in all directions for hours at a time as he wished Strange and marvelous! That the most spirited horses and those most impatient riders would, when he first mounted them, tremble violently and shudder as if in great fear." He wrote of himself as if he was the greatest human to ever live on earth.
Another trait of the Renaissance that Leon Alberti possessed was humanism.