Linear Perspective cannot be immediately followed by either the “prospettiva de’ perdimenti” or the “prospettiva de’ colori” or the aerial perspective; since these branches of the subject presuppose a knowledge of the principles of Light and Shade. No apology, therefore, is here needed for placing these immediately after Linear Perspective.
We have various plans suggested by Leonardo for the arrangement of the mass of materials treating of this subject. Among these I have given the preference to a scheme propounded in No. III, because, in all probability, we have here a final and definite purpose expressed. Several authors have expressed it as their opinion that the Paris Manuscript C is a complete and finished treatise on Light and Shade. Certainly, the Principles of Light and Shade form by far the larger portion of this MS. which consists of two separate parts; still, the materials are far from being finally arranged. It is also evident that he here investigates the subject from the point of view of the Physicist rather than from that of the Painter.
The plan of a scheme of arrangement suggested in No. III and adopted by me has been strictly adhered to for the first four Books. For the three last, however, few materials have come down to us; and it must be admitted that these three Books would find a far more appropriate place in a work on Physics than in a treatise on Painting. For this reason I have collected in Book V all the chapters on Reflections, and in Book VI I have put together and arranged all the sections of MS. C that belong to the book on Painting, so far as they relate to Light and Shade, while the sections of the same MS. which treat of the “Prospettiva de’ perdimenti” have, of course, been excluded from the series on Light and Shade.
[Footnote III: This text has already been published with some slight variations in Dozio’s pamphlet Degli scritti e disegni di Leonardo da Vinci, Milan 1871, pp. 30—31. Dozio did not transcribe it from the original MS. which seems to have remained unknown to him, but from an old copy (MS. H. 227 in the Ambrosian Library).]
GENERAL INTRODUCTION.
Taken from The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci edited by Jean Paul Richter, 1880.