Landscapes at a Distance and the Painting of Fog
How distant landscapes lose their bright intervals, and how mist brightens or darkens against the sun
Continuing the sixth part of the Treatise on Painting, this page explains why landscapes are bright at close range, where the eye still sees meadows and sky through the gaps of the foliage, but darken with distance as those intervals close and only the shaded branching remains before it too dissolves into the color of the horizon. A new chapter, marked 'b,' takes up the painting of fog: mist grows thicker the lower it descends, glowing when it lies between sun and eye but reading as dark when the eye lies between sun and mist. The text is written throughout in Melzi's clear hand with chapter labels 'a' and 'b.'
On this page
Why distant landscapes lose their bright intervals
Near at hand the eye sees meadows, sky and other gaps among the treetops, so the landscape reads as bright. As distance closes those intervals, only the branching of the trees remains; being denser and diminished, it takes more shade toward each tree's centre than the meadow does, and this darkness in turn brightens with further distance until it merges into the color of the horizon.
The painting of fog that covers landscapes
The mists mingled in the air grow thicker the lower they sink, so the sun's rays shine the more within them when the fog lies between sun and eye. But when the eye lies between the sun and the fog, the fog looks dark, and this darkness is the stronger the lower the mist lies; either way the mist stays as dark as a cloud.
The discontinuous solar shadows of foliage
The page opens by observing that the solar shadows cast by trees are broken and discontinuous, resembling the scattered tufts of leaves from which they derive. This grounds the following advice on how to render foliage and its cast shadows at a distance.