How White Drapery Takes the Colors of Air and Meadow Around It
Blue from the luminous air, green from the field; the eye in light seeing dark
This page of Book Five, headed QVINTA and numbered 230, continues the treatment of white bodies with no accompanying drawing. The part of a woman in white seen by the luminous, azure air inclines toward blue, while folds seen by a sunlit meadow are tinged green by reflected rays, so white transmutes into the colors of the luminous and non-luminous objects nearby. The chapter urges the painter to make figures appear animated with the shadows and lights of the faces, which the brush adds where the pen cannot. A new chapter, 'Of the eye that is in the light and sees a dark place,' then argues that in darkness a farther color is dimmed by the greater thickness of interposed transparent medium.
On this page
White drapery colored by air and meadow
The part of a woman in white seen by the luminous air, which is azure, appears to incline toward blue; the folds seen by a sunlit meadow are tinged in the meadow's color by reflected rays. Thus white keeps transmuting into the colors of the luminous and non-luminous objects nearby.
What the brush adds beyond the pen
If you can reason about and write the demonstration of the forms, the painter will make figures that appear animated with the shadows and lights that compose the air of the faces, which you cannot add with the pen but which is added with the brush.
The eye in the light seeing a dark place
In the dark, no second color is as bright as the first, even when they are alike in themselves. A body's surface is tinged the more by the interposed transparent medium the greater its thickness, so a farther color set in a dark transparent medium is dimmed in proportion to the quantity of dark medium between it and the eye.