The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci — CompleteLeonardo, da Vinci
Science
The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci — Complete
Leonardo, da Vinci
Leonardo, da Vinci, 1452-1519 -- Notebooks, sketchbooks, etc.
[Footnote: A drawing in red chalk from the Windsor collection (see
Pl. XXIX), representing a landscape with storm-clouds, may serve to
illustrate this section as well as the following one.]
477.
OF CLOUDS, SMOKE AND DUST AND THE FLAMES OF A FURNACE OR OF A
BURNING KILN.
The clouds do not show their rounded forms excepting on the sides
which face the sun; on the others the roundness is imperceptible
because they are in the shade. [Footnote: The text of this chapter
is given in facsimile on Pls. XXXVI and XXXVII. The two halves of
the leaf form but one in the original. On the margin close to lines
4 and 5 is the note: _rossore d'aria inverso l'orizonte_--(of the
redness of the atmosphere near the horizon). The sketches on the
lower portion of the page will be spoken of in No. 668.]
If the sun is in the East and the clouds in the West, the eye placed
between the sun and the clouds sees the edges of the rounded forms
composing these clouds as dark, and the portions which are
surrounded by this dark [edge] are light. And this occurs because
the edges of the rounded forms of these clouds are turned towards
the upper or lateral sky, which is reflected in them.
Both the cloud and the tree display no roundness at all on their
shaded side.
On images reflected in water.
478.
Painters often deceive themselves, by representing water in which
they make the water reflect the objects seen by the man. But the
water reflects the object from one side and the man sees it from the
other; and it often happens that the painter sees an object from
below, and thus one and the same object is seen from hind part
before and upside down, because the water shows the image of the
object in one way, and the eye sees it in another.
Of rainbows and rain (479. 480).
479.
The colours in the middle of the rainbow mingle together.
The bow in itself is not in the rain nor in the eye that sees it;
though it is generated by the rain, the sun, and the eye. The
rainbow is always seen by the eye that is between the rain and the
body of the sun; hence if the sun is in the East and the rain is in
the West it will appear on the rain in the West.
480.
When the air is condensed into rain it would produce a vacuum if the
rest of the air did not prevent this by filling its place, as it
does with a violent rush; and this is the wind which rises in the
summer time, accompanied by heavy rain.
Of flower seeds.
481.
All the flowers which turn towards the sun perfect their seeds; but
not the others; that is to say those which get only the reflection
of the sun.
IX.
_The Practice of Painting._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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