and with each of those I will mix each of the others one by one, and then two by two and three by three, continuing thus up to the whole number of all the colors. Then I will begin again to mix the colors two with two and three with two, and then with four, continuing thus to the end, upon those first two colors. And then I will put three of them, and with those three I will pair another three, and then six, and so it will continue; and then I will pursue such mixtures in all proportions.

a. By simple colors I mean those that are not compounded, nor can be compounded by way of mixing other colors.
Black and white — although these are not counted among the colors, because the one is darkness and the other light, that is, the one is privation and the other generative — I do not for this reason wish to leave them out, because in painting they are the principal ones, since painting is composed of shadows and lights, that is, of light and dark. After black and white follow blue and yellow, then green and the tawny (leonino), that is tan (taneto), or let me say ochre; then purple (morello) and red; and these are eight colors, and there are no more in nature, with which I begin the mixing. And let the first be black and white; then black and yellow, and black and red; then yellow and black, yellow and red; and because I lack paper here, I will leave the making of such a distinction to my own work with a long treatment, which will be of great use, indeed most necessary; and such a description will be placed between the theory and the practice of painting.

[214] Of the surface of every shadowed body.
b. The surface of every shadowed body partakes of the color of its object. This the shadowed bodies show with certainty, since none of the aforesaid bodies shows its shape or color unless the medium interposed between the body and the luminous source is