Page:A Treatise on Painting.djvu/255

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CONTRASTE AND EFFECT.
107

but the light parts, therefore your figures would appear mutilated of all that remains lost in the back-ground.

CONTRASTE AND EFFECT.

Chap. CCVII.A Precept.

Figures will have more grace, placed in the open and general light, than in any particular or small one; because the powerful and extended light will surround and embrace the objects: and works done in that kind of light appear pleasant and graceful when placed at a distance[1], while those which are drawn in a narrow light, will receive great force of shadow, but will never appear at a great distance, but as painted objects.

Chap. CCVIII.Of the Interposition of transparent Bodies between the Eye and the Object.

The greater the transparent interposition is between the eye and the object, the more the colour of that object will participate of, or be changed into that of the transparent medium[2].

  1. See chap. cxcvi.
  2. 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.
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