chapter cclxvii

.]

[Footnote 37: Sir Joshua Reynolds frequently inculcated these precepts in his lectures, and indeed they cannot be too often enforced.]

[Footnote 38: Probably this would have formed a part of his intended Treatise on Light and Shadow, but no such proposition occurs in the present work.]

[Footnote 39: See chapters cc. and ccix.]

[Footnote 40: See chap. ccix.]

[Footnote 41: This cannot be taken as an absolute rule; it must be left in a great measure to the judgment of the painter. For much graceful softness and grandeur is acquired, sometimes, by blending the lights of the figures with the light part of the ground; and so of the shadows; as Leonardo himself has observed in chapters cxciv. cxcv. and Sir Joshua Reynolds has often put in practice with success.]

[Footnote 42: See chap. cclxv.]

[Footnote 43: See chap. cxcvi.]

[Footnote 44: He means here to say, that in proportion as the body interposed between the eye and the object is more or less transparent, the greater or less quantity of the colour of the body interposed will be communicated to the object.]

[Footnote 45: See the note to chap. cc.]

[Footnote 46: See the preceding chapter, and chap. cc.]

[Footnote 47: The appearance of motion is lessened according to the distance, in the same proportion as objects diminish in size.]

[Footnote 48: See chap. ccxvii. and ccxix.]

[Footnote 49: See chap. ccxv. and ccxix.]

[Footnote 50: This was intended to constitute a part of some book of Perspective, which we have not; but the rule here referred to will be found in chap. cccx. of the present work.]

[Footnote 51: See chap. ccxv. and ccxvii.]

[Footnote 52: No such work was ever published, nor, for any thing that appears, ever written.]

[Footnote 53: The French translation of 1716 has a note on this chapter, saying, that the invention of enamel painting found out since the time of Leonardo da Vinci, would better answer to the title of this chapter, and also be a better method of painting. I must beg leave, however, to dissent from this opinion, as the two kinds of painting are so different, that they cannot be compared. Leonardo treats of oil painting, but the other is vitrification. Leonardo is known to have spent a great deal of time in experiments, of which this is a specimen, and it may appear ridiculous to the practitioners of more modern date, as he does not enter more fully into a minute description of the materials, or the mode of employing them. The principle laid down in the text appears to me to be simply this: to make the oil entirely evaporate from the colours by the action of fire, and afterwards to prevent the action of the air by the means of a glass, which in itself is an excellent principle, but not applicable, any more than enamel painting to large works.]

[Footnote 54: It is evident that distemper or size painting is here meant.]

[Footnote 55: Indian ink.]

[Footnote 56: This rule is not without exception: see chap. ccxxxiv.]

[Footnote 57: See chap. ccxxxviii.]

[Footnote 58: See chap. ccxxxvii.]

[Footnote 59: See chapters ccxlvii. cclxxiv. in the present work. Probably they were intended to form a part of a distinct treatise, and to have been ranged as propositions in that, but at present they are not so placed.]

[Footnote 60: See chap. ccxlviii.]

[Footnote 61: See chap. cclxxiv.]

[Footnote 62: Although the author seems to have designed that this, and many other propositions to which he refers, should have formed a part of some regular work, and he has accordingly referred to them whenever he has mentioned them, by their intended numerical situation in that work, whatever it might be, it does not appear that he ever carried this design into execution. There are, however, several chapters in the present work, viz. ccxciii. cclxxxix. cclxxxv. ccxcv. in which the principle in the text is recognised, and which probably would have been transferred into the projected treatise, if he had ever drawn it up.]

[Footnote 63: The note on the preceding chapter is in a great measure applicable to this, and the proposition mentioned in the text is also to be found in