The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci Complete


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where the sun shines, and the mist hides the rest. When the sun  
rises and chases away the haze, the hills on the side where it lifts  
begin to grow clearer, and look blue, and seem to smoke with the  
vanishing mists; and the buildings reveal their lights and shadows;  
through the thinner vapour they show only their lights and through  
the thicker air nothing at all. This is when the movement of the  
mist makes it part horizontally, and then the edges of the mist will  
be indistinct against the blue of the sky, and towards the earth it  
will look almost like dust blown up. In proportion as the atmosphere  
is dense the buildings of a city and the trees in a landscape will  
look fewer, because only the tallest and largest will be seen.  
Darkness affects every thing with its hue, and the more an object  
differs from darkness, the more we see its real and natural colour.  
The mountains will look few, because only those will be seen which  
are farthest apart; since, at such a distance, the density increases  
to such a degree that it causes a brightness by which the darkness  
of the hills becomes divided and vanishes indeed towards the top.  
There is less [mist] between lower and nearer hills and yet little  
is to be distinguished, and least towards the bottom.  
3
06.  
The surface of an object partakes of the colour of the light which  
illuminates it; and of the colour of the atmosphere which lies  
between the eye and that object, that is of the colour of the  
228  


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Quick Jump
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