Color of Greenery; Which Surfaces Show Their True Color
Glossy leaves lose their hue to reflected sheen while matte surfaces keep it; the study of landscape brightness begins.
A page of the Treatise on Painting, in Melzi's clear scribal hand, arguing that deeply shadowed greenery appears to share more in blue, since blue is compounded of light and dark over long distances. Leonardo then contrasts polished, lustrous surfaces, which mirror the sun and lose their true color, with matte, hairy surfaces such as linen or downy leaves, which cannot reflect and so render only their own natural color. The final rubric opens a new chapter, 'On the clearness of landscapes,' whose argument runs onto the next leaf.
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Darker greenery partakes more of blue
Leonardo states that greenery of deeper shadowiness appears to share more in blue, because (by the cited 'seventh') blue is compounded of light and dark seen across long distances. It is an early statement of aerial perspective applied to foliage.
Polished surfaces reflect light and lose their hue
The smoother and more polished a surface, the less it shows its true color, because it takes on a lustre that mirrors the sun or the illuminating air. Grasses of meadows and glossy tree-leaves are thereby deprived of their natural color in the reflecting part.
Matte, hairy surfaces keep their true color
Conversely, the least polished and flattest surfaces show their true color most, since they cannot mirror other objects. Linen cloth and hairy leaves render only their own natural color, uncorrupted by reflected light such as the sun's red glow tinting clouds at sunset.