The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci

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Page 267 of 1565.
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OF LIGHT AND SHADE.

Every portion of the surface of a body is varied [in hue] by the
[reflected] colour of the object that may be opposite to it.

EXAMPLE.

If you place a spherical body between various objects that is to say
with [direct] sunlight on one side of it, and on the other a wall
illuminated by the sun, which wall may be green or of any other
colour, while the surface on which it is placed may be red, and the
two lateral sides are in shadow, you will see that the natural
colour of that body will assume something of the hue reflected from
those objects. The strongest will be [given by] the luminous body;
the second by the illuminated wall, the third by the shadows. There
will still be a portion which will take a tint from the colour of
the edges.

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