Plants Between Eye and Light, and the Four Accidents of Foliage
Back-lit plants; shadow, light, lustre and transparency; why distant outlines grow round
This page treats plants seen with the light behind them and the visual 'accidents' of foliage. Leonardo describes a back-lit plant whose front is bright, mingling transparent leaves seen from the reverse with lustrous leaves seen from the front, over a dark green ground shaded by the plant itself. He states that the accidental colours of tree fronds are four: shadow, light, lustre and transparency, and that at great distance these merge into a mixture dominated by whichever accident is largest. A final chapter notes that the outlines of distant tree-branchings tend increasingly toward the spherical, using tree a as the near example.
On this page
A back-lit plant: bright front over dark shaded ground
In plants set between the eye and the light, the front part is bright, its brightness mixed with a branching of transparent leaves seen from the reverse together with lustrous leaves seen from the front. Their ground below and behind is of dark greenery, shaded by the front of the plant; this happens in plants higher than the eye.
The four accidental colours of tree fronds
The accidental colours of the fronds of trees are four, that is: shadow, light, lustre, and transparency. At a long distance the accidental parts of the leaves form a single mixture, which partakes more of whichever accident is of the largest figure.
Distant branch-outlines tend toward the spherical
The outlines that the branchings of trees have against the illuminated air become, the more remote they are, a figure tending to the spherical; and the nearer they are, the more they depart from that sphericity, as tree a in the first instance, which being near...