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nydus/The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci — CompletePublic
Page 347 of 1234
Table of Contents

PROLEGOMENA AND GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO THE BOOK ON PAINTING

we find suggestions for the choice of a light with practical hints as to sketching a picture and some other precepts of a practical character which must come under consideration in the course of completing the painting. In all this I have followed the same principle of arrangement in the text as was carried out in the Theory of Painting, thus the suggestions for the Perspective of a picture, (Nos. 536-569_), are followed by the theory of light and shade for the practical method of optics (Nos.548—566) and this by the practical precepts or the treatment of aerial perspective (567—570*)._

In the passage on Portrait and Figure Painting the principles of painting as applied to a bust and head are separated and placed first, since the advice to figure painters must have some connection with the principles of the treatment of composition by which they are followed.

But this arrangement of the text made it seem advisable not to pick out the practical precepts as to the representation of trees and landscape from the close connection in which they were originally placed—unlike the rest of the practical precepts—with the theory of this branch of the subject. They must therefore be sought under the section entitled Botany for Painters.

As a supplement to the Libro di Pittura *I have here added those texts which treat of the Painter's materials,—as chalk, drawing paper, colours and their preparation, of the management of oils and varnishes; in the appendix are some notes on chemical substances. Possibly some of these, if not all, may have stood in connection with the preparation of colours. It is in the very nature of things that Leonardo's incidental indications as to colours

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