Black Tinges White Most; Shadows Darkening into Night
Surface colour is strongest on white; deep shadows lose all colour; the painter as imitator of nature
This all-text folio finishes chapter [704] by identifying black, as the colour most remote from white, as the object that most tinges a white opaque surface. Chapter [705] restates that a surface partakes of its object's colour more perceptibly the whiter the surface and the nearer the colour. Chapter [706] observes that as all colours are absorbed into the darkness of night, so the shadows of any colour end in that darkness, and warns the painter not to expect bordering colours to be told apart in the deepest darks, since he professes to imitate nature and should not presume to correct her. Chapter [707] opens on the colours of the lights that illuminate shadowed bodies, describing a body set between near walls in a dark place, lit on one side by a small candle and on the other by a small vent of air.
On this page
[704] Black tinges a white surface most
The object that most tinges the white surface of an opaque body with its likeness is the one by nature most remote from white, which is black. Black is therefore the colour with which a white opaque surface will be tinged more than by any colour of other objects.
[705] Surface colour is strongest on white and near objects
The surface of every opaque body partakes of the colour of its object, and that colour is the more perceptible on the surface the whiter the surface is and the nearer the colour lies to it. This ties the visibility of reflected colour to both the surface's lightness and the object's proximity.
[706] Shadows end in the darkness of night; the painter as imitator
Just as all colours are absorbed into the obscurity of night, so the shadows of any colour end in that darkness. The painter should not require bordering colours to be distinguished in his deepest darks, for if nature does not allow it he, as an imitator of nature, must not presume to correct her, since the fault is in him and not in her.
[707] Bodies lit by two small unequal lights
A new chapter concerns the colours of the lights that illuminate shadowed bodies. The example places a shadowed body between near walls in a dark place, lit on one side by a very small candle flame and on the opposite side by a very small vent of air.