Reflected Color: White the Most Receptive Surface
Green from blue light on a yellow body; a surface takes most color from its nearest neighbor.
Four chapters of the Treatise on Painting on reflected color, with marginal letters a, b, c marking the successive sections. It opens by completing the prior thought: a yellow opaque body lit by a blue luminous source shows green, since green is composed of yellow and blue. It then states that white is the most receptive surface for color (black the least, like a broken vessel deprived of all capacity), that a surface partakes most intensely of the color of its nearest object, and that a body shows its most perfect color when its near object is of a similar hue.
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Green from a yellow body under blue light
Completing the previous chapter, the text says that if the opaque body is yellow and the luminous source is blue, the illuminated part will be green, since green is composed of yellow and blue. This ties pigment color to the color of the incident light. The demonstration continues the argument that a body's shown color depends on its illumination.
White receives color best, black least
Chapter [215], marked a, states that white is more receptive of any color than any other non-mirrored surface. The reasoning is that an empty body can receive what non-empty bodies cannot; white is called empty or deprived of color, so it partakes of a luminous color more than black. Black is likened to a broken vessel, deprived of all capacity to hold anything.
A surface takes most color from its nearest object
Chapter [216], marked b, holds that a body's surface partakes most intensely of the color of the object nearest to it, because a near object sends a greater multitude of images to alter the surface than a remote one. Chapter [217], marked c, adds that a surface shows its most perfect color when its near object is of a color similar to its own. Both chapters carry marginal letter labels.