ii4 LANDSCAPE DESIGN 



blue of the sky, or of a cloud of smoke. Some of the blue being re- 

 flected, the remaining light, which goes through the atmosphere, has 

 relatively more of the hues more or less complementary to blue, that 

 is, the reds and yellows. And these colors will increase in intensity as 

 the sun nears the horizon and as, consequently, its rays travel for a 

 greater distance through the earth's atmosphere and particularly 

 through its lower layers where the minute reflecting particles are most 

 abundant. This accounts for the colors of sunrise and sunset. The 

 larger the particles in the atmosphere, however, the more will they 

 reflect light of all colors, until in the case of a fog, a cloud, a snowstorm, 

 the light which they reflect is practically the same in hue as the light 

 which they receive. 



The same modifications will occur in the light which comes to our 

 eyes from the objects in a landscape. When a sun-illumined object is 

 near the observer so that the effect of the atmosphere between the 

 object and the eye is not noticeable, the portions of the object which 

 are in sunshine will show their local color * modified only by the color 

 of the sunlight as it is under the atmospheric conditions of the par- 

 ticular case. The portions of the object which are in shade or shadow 

 will show their local color modified by the color of the light with which 

 they are illumined. This must be reflected light. If it proceeds from 

 the open sky it will be, as we have seen, blue, and the local color of the 

 object in shadow will be modified accordingly.! If it is reflected from 

 surrounding colored objects, it will partake of their color in each case 

 and the color of the object in the shadow will be that which its local 

 color enables it to reflect from the colored light which it receives. When 

 a considerable extent of sun-illumined atmosphere intervenes between 

 the observer and the object, these conditions are modified. The light 

 which the object itself reflects from its sun-illumined and from its 

 shadowed parts comes to the eye mixed with and noticeably modified 



* See footnote, p. 106. 



f "The shadows of verdure always approximate to blue, and so it is with every 

 shadow of every other thing, and they tend to this colour more entirely when they are 

 further distant from the eye, and less in proportion as they are nearer." 



Leonardo da Vinci's Note-books. Arranged and rendered into English with In- 

 troductions by Edward McCurdy. From section, Of the Shadows of Verdure, p. 244. 



