Il "De equo animante" di Leon Battista Alberti: una teoria della bellezza?

The De equo animante is introduced as a technical and erudite, rather than artistic essay, because it elaborates news drawn by the auctoritates in subject of hippology. Nevertheless, beginning from the concept of " vitality ", envoy in relief since the title, is possible to individualize two paths that allow of to reread the text inside the Leon Battista Alberti's aesthetics: the first one is untied in same breast to the theory of the beauty and it shows an aesthetical conception that is resolved in the functionality; the second interprets the concept of " vitality " in the sense of the enargeia, of the "representative liveliness", fundamental qualities of the work of art. At the end of these analyses and to the light of the osmosis that tied artistic and scientific reflection in Fifteenth Century, it is understood that also a technical writing, as the De equo animante, can have aesthetical value, according to a key of non sectorial and impoverishing reading, but open to gather also aesthetical ideas found in far contexts from those more specifically artistic.