We are never to admit two equal lights in the same picture, but the greater light must strike forcibly on the middle; and there extend its greatest clearness on those places of the picture, where the principal figures of it are, and where the {315.} strength of the action is performed; diminishing by degrees as it comes nearer and nearer to the borders; and after the same manner, that the light of the sun languishes insensibly, in its spreading from the east, from whence it begins, towards the west, where it decays and vanishes; so the light of the picture being distributed over all the colours, will become less sensible the farther it is removed {320.} from its original. The experience of this is evident in those statues, which we see set up in the midst of public places, whose upper parts are more enlightened than the lower; and therefore you are to imitate them in the distribution of your lights. Avoid strong shadows on the middle of the limbs, lest the great quantity of black which composes those shadows should seem to enter into them, and to cut them: rather take care to place {325.} those shadowings round about them, thereby to heighten the parts; and take such advantageous lights, that after great lights great shadows may succeed. And therefore Titian said, with reason, that he knew no better rule for the distribution of the lights and shadows, than his observations drawn from a [*†329.] bunch of grapes. [Sidenote: XXXIV. Of white and black.] [*†330.] Pure, or unmixed white, either draws an object {330.} nearer, or carries it off to farther distance; it draws it nearer with black, and throws it backward without it. [*†332.] But as for pure black, there is nothing which brings the object nearer to the sight. The light being altered by some colour, never fails to communicate somewhat of that colour to the bodies on which it strikes; and the same effect is performed by the medium of air, through which it passes. [Sidenote: XXXV. The reflection of colours.] The bodies which are close together, receive from {335.} each other that colour which is opposite to them; and reflect on each other that, which is naturally and properly their own. [Sidenote: XXXVI. Union of colours.]