The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci

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Page 262 of 1565.
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The more brilliant the light given by a luminous body, the deeper
will the shadows be cast by the objects it illuminates.

_V._

_Theory of colours._

_Leonardo's theory of colours is even more intimately connected with
his principles of light and shade than his Perspective of
Disappearance and is in fact merely an appendix or supplement to
those principles, as we gather from the titles to sections_ 264,
267_, and _276_, while others again_ (_Nos._ 281, 282_) are headed_
Prospettiva.

_A very few of these chapters are to be found in the oldest copies
and editions of the Treatise on Painting, and although the material
they afford is but meager and the connection between them but
slight, we must still attribute to them a special theoretical value
as well as practical utility--all the more so because our knowledge
of the theory and use of colours at the time of the Renaissance is
still extremely limited._

The reciprocal effects of colours on objects placed opposite each
other (263-272).

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