HOW A CAST SHADOW CAN NEVER BE OF THE SAME SIZE AS THE BODY THAT CASTS IT.
If the rays of light proceed, as experience shows, from a single point and are diffused in a sphere round this point, radiating and dispersed through the air, the farther they spread the wider they must spread; and an object placed between the light and a wall is always imaged larger in its shadow, because the rays that strike it [Footnote: 7. The following lines are wanting to complete the logical connection.] would, by the time they have reached the wall, have become larger.
Taken from The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci edited by Jean Paul Richter, 1880.