Light and shade on clouds (474-477).

474.

Describe how the clouds are formed and how they dissolve, and what cause raises vapour.

475.

The shadows in clouds are lighter in proportion as they are nearer to the horizon.

[Footnote:  The drawing belonging to this was in black chalk and is totally effaced.]

476.

When clouds come between the sun and the eye all the upper edges of their round forms are light, and towards the middle they are dark, and this happens because towards the top these edges have the sun above them while you are below them; and the same thing happens with the position of the branches of trees; and again the clouds, like the trees, being somewhat transparent, are lighted up in part, and at the edges they show thinner.

But, when the eye is between the cloud and the sun, the cloud has the contrary effect to the former, for the edges of its mass are dark and it is light towards the middle; and this happens because you see the same side as faces the sun, and because the edges have some transparency and reveal to the eye that portion which is hidden beyond them, and which, as it does not catch the sunlight like that portion turned towards it, is necessarily somewhat darker.  Again, it may be that you see the details of these rounded masses from the lower side, while the sun shines on the upper side and as they are not so situated as to reflect the light of the sun, as in the first instance they remain dark.

The black clouds which are often seen higher up than those which are illuminated by the sun are shaded by other clouds, lying between them and the sun.

Again, the rounded forms of the clouds that face the sun, show their edges dark because they lie against the light background; and to see that this is true, you may look at the top of any cloud that is wholly light because it lies against the blue of the atmosphere, which is darker than the cloud.

[Footnote:  A drawing in red chalk from the Windsor collection (see Pl.  XXIX), representing a landscape with storm-clouds, may serve to illustrate this section as well as the following one.]

477.

OF CLOUDS, SMOKE AND DUST AND THE FLAMES OF A FURNACE OR OF A
BURNING KILN.

The clouds do not show their rounded forms excepting on the sides which face the sun; on the others the roundness is imperceptible because they are in the shade. [Footnote:  The text of this chapter is given in facsimile on Pls.  XXXVI and XXXVII.  The two halves of the leaf form but one in the original.  On the margin close to lines 4 and 5 is the note:  rossore d’aria inverso l’orizonte—­(of the redness of the atmosphere near the horizon).  The sketches on the lower portion of the page will be spoken of in No. 668.]

If the sun is in the East and the clouds in the West, the eye placed between the sun and the clouds sees the edges of the rounded forms composing these clouds as dark, and the portions which are surrounded by this dark [edge] are light.  And this occurs because the edges of the rounded forms of these clouds are turned towards the upper or lateral sky, which is reflected in them.