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PERSPECTIVE OF COLOURS.
Chap. CCLXXXIII.—A Precept of Perspective in regard to Painting.
When, on account of some particular quality of the air, you can no longer distinguish the difference between the lights and shadows of objects, you may reject the perspective of shadows, and make use only of the linear perspective, and the diminution of colours, to lessen the knowledge of the objects opposed to the eye; and this, that is to say, the loss of the knowledge of the figure of each object, will make the same object appear more remote.
The eye can never arrive at a perfect knowledge of the interval between two objects variously distant, by means of the linear perspective alone, if not assisted by the perspective of colours.
Chap. CCLXXXIV.—Of the Perspective of Colours.
The air will participate less of the azure of the sky, in proportion as it comes nearer to the horizon, as it is proved by the third and ninth proposition[1], that pure and subtile bodies (such as compose the air) will be less illuminated by the sun than those
- ↑ These propositions, any more than the others mentioned in different parts of this work, were never digested into a regular treatise, as was evidently intended by the author, and consequently are not to be found, except perhaps in some of the volumes of the author’s manuscript collections.
