Why faces look dark and men go unrecognized at a distance
The eye's small pupil and dark nerve; a man a crossbow-shot off seen through a needle's eye
A text page of the Treatise on Painting on the physiology of vision and its consequences for painting figures. The first chapter argues that a distant face appears dark because its image, tiny amid the vast images of sky and earth entering the eye's small pupil, must cross the dark hollow nerve and is tinged by that darkness; the black point at the eye's centre acts like a hole in a board that looks black. The second chapter begins to show why a man cannot be recognized at a crossbow-shot's distance, using the experiment of viewing many men through a needle's eye held near the eye.
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Why faces appear dark from afar: the small pupil and the dark nerve
All images enter the sense through the small light of the eye; a distant face is almost nothing amid the images of sky and earth and occupies too little of that light to be grasped. Passing through the dark hollow nerve, the weakly coloured image is tinged by that darkness and reaches the receiving faculty looking dark, just as a hole bored in a board appears black.
A man at a crossbow-shot seen through a needle's eye
Diminishing perspective shows that the farther a thing is, the smaller it becomes. Holding the window of a small needle near the eye, one can see through it many men, distant a crossbow-shot, all sending their images to the eye and all fitting at once within that tiny opening.