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nydus/The Notebooks of Leonardo da VinciPublic
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Table of Contents

PROLEGOMENA AND GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO THE BOOK ON PAINTING

be seen but the whole tree is distinguished with difficulty. Every object in shadow, of whatever form it may be, at a great distance appears to be spherical. And this occurs because, if it is a square body, at a very short distance it loses its angles, and a little farther off it loses still more of its smaller sides which remain. And thus before the whole is lost [to sight] the parts are lost, being smaller than the whole; as a man, who in such a distant position loses his legs, arms and head before [the mass of] his body, then the outlines of length are lost before those of breadth, and where they have become equal it would be a square if the angles remained; but as they are lost it is round.

[Footnote: The sketch No. 4, Pl. XXVIII, belongs

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