Chap. CCLXXII.—Of detaching the Figures.
Let the colours of which the draperies of your figures are composed, be such as to form a pleasing variety, to distinguish one from the other; and although, for the sake of harmony, they should be of the same nature[1], they must not stick together, but vary in point of light, according to the distance and interposition of the air between them. By the same rule, the outlines are to be more precise, or lost, in proportion to their distance or proximity.
- ↑ I do not know a better comment on this passage than Felibien’s Examination of Le Brun’s Picture of the Tent of Darius. From this (which has been reprinted with an English translation, by Colonel Parsons in 1700, in folio) it will clearly appear, what the chain of connexion is between every colour there used, and its nearest neighbour, and consequently a rule may be formed from it with more certainty and precision than where the student is left to develope it for himself, from the mere inspection of different examples of colouring.