Landscapes have a finer blue when, in fair weather, the sun is at midday than at any other hour of the day, because the air is cleared of vapours; and looking in that direction, you see the trees beautiful toward their edges and the shadows toward the middle dark; and in the long distances the air that comes between you and them grows more beautiful when there is something darker behind it, and so the blue is most beautiful.

Things seen on the side where the sun illuminates them will not show you their shadows. But if you are lower than the sun, you will see what the sun did not see, and that will be all in shadow.

The leaves of trees that come between you and the sun are of 5 principal colours: namely a most beautiful lustrous green, and the mirroring of the air that lights the part which cannot be seen by the sun, and the shadowed ones that see only the ground, and the darkest which are surrounded by something other than darkness ...

The trees among the fields that lie between the sun and you are far more beautiful than those between which and the sun you stand; and this happens because those toward the sun show their transparent leaves toward the edges, and those that are not transparent, that is at the very edges, are lustrous: it is true that the shadows are dark, because they are occupied by nothing.

The trees between which and the sun you interpose yourself will not show themselves to you except in their clear and natural colour, which in itself is not very intense; and besides this, certain highlights which, not being against a field very different from their brightness, will be of little prominence; and if you are lower than them, they can still show you those parts which the sun did not see, which will be shadowed.

On the wind.

But if you are on the side from which the wind blows, you will see the trees much brighter than you would from other directions; and this happens because the wind uncovers the undersides of the leaves, which in all of them are much whiter than their upper side; and above all they will be brightest if the wind blows from the region where the sun is, to which you have turned your back.

All trees seen toward the sun are dark toward the middle; and this darkness will have the shape of the tree itself, when it is set apart from the others.

The cast shadows of trees seen from the sun are as dark as that of the middle of the tree.

The cast shadow of trees will never be of less amount than the mass of the tree itself; but it will be so much greater as the site where it falls is more oblique toward the centre of the world.

That shadow will be narrower toward the middle of the tree whose branching is more sparse.

Every branch has the middle of the shadow of any branch, and consequently of the whole tree.

The shape of any shadow of a branch or tree will be clothed with a luminous part on the side from which the light comes; and this illumination will have the shape of the shadows, and this holds for the space of a mile on the side where the sun is.

If it happens that some cloud shadows part of the hills, its trees change less than their open spaces or plains; because the trees on the hills are denser in branches, since they put out less growth per year than on the plains; whence, being both dark by nature and full of shadows, the shadows of the clouds cannot darken them further, while the plains that lie between the trees, having lost no shadow, strongly change in their brightness, and especially those that differ from green, that is worked soil or ruins of mountains or their barrenness or stoniness.

Where the trees border on the air, they appear of one and the same colour, unless they be very near and of dense leaves, like the pine and similar trees.

When you see the trees on the side where the sun lights them, you will see them almost of one and the same brightness, and the shadows within them will be occupied by the illuminated leaves that come between your eye and the shadows.

Nearby trees.

The trees that come between the sun and the eye, beyond the shadows that spread toward its middle, will show the green of their transparent leaves. That transparency will be interrupted in many parts by the shadowed leaves and branches that come between you and them, and in their upper parts they will be accompanied by many highlights of leaves.