Drapery Folds: Depth, Enclosed Flesh, and Diminution
Folds should not cut across a limb, should clothe flesh not bare bone, and should thin toward the edges
This page completes chapter 543 and adds a short chapter on folds. Leonardo insists that no fold, with the shadow of its depth, should appear to cut across a limb, and that where a figure wears several garments the outermost should seem to enclose the flesh, not merely the bare bones, with the thickness proper to its layers. He adds that folds surrounding the limbs must diminish in thickness toward the edges of what they enclose. The final chapter, De' pieghe, treats how the tightest folds wrinkle on the side where the limb bends and are drawn out on the opposite side.
On this page
Folds must not cut the limb, and must clothe flesh not bone
No fold, with the shadow of its depth, should cut across any limb, so that the depth of the fold appears set deeper than the surface of the clothed member. Where a figure wears several garments, the outer one should not seem to enclose the bare bones but the flesh together with them, and the cloths should have the thickness required by the multiplication of their layers.
Folds diminish toward the edges of what they enclose
The folds of cloth that surround the limbs must diminish in their thickness toward the extremities of the thing enclosed. The bulk of drapery should taper as it approaches the edges of the enfolded member.
Of folds: wrinkling where the limb bends
The length of the folds that lie tightest upon the limbs must wrinkle on the side toward which the limb diminishes through its bendings. On the opposite side of that bend the folds should be drawn out.