The colours of shadows and lit surfaces
Why painted colours lose their beauty and variety in darkness
A page of painting theory, headed "Pittura," written entirely in Leonardo's mirror-script with no diagrams. It argues that colours placed in shadow keep their natural beauty only in proportion to how little darkness surrounds them, and shine most when set in bright, splendid light. In an objection-and-reply form it maintains that in deep shadow, and at great distance, the colours of different shaded things all collapse toward a single darkness, so that only an illuminated surface reveals a body's true colour.
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Colour keeps its beauty in light, loses it in shadow
Leonardo states that colours placed in shadow partake of their natural beauty more or less according to whether they lie in lesser or greater darkness. Colours set in a luminous space appear the more beautiful as the light is of greater splendour. This is framed as a rule for the painter deciding where to place his colours.
In deep shadow and at distance all colours read as one darkness
Against the objection that shaded colours are as varied as the things shaded, Leonardo replies that colours in shadow show ever less variety the darker the shadow. He cites people looking from a bright piazza into shadowy churches, where paintings clothed in many colours all appear dressed in darkness. Therefore at long distance the shadows of all colours look uniformly dark, and only the lit part of a body shows its true colour.