Page:A Treatise on Painting.djvu/303

 that object. If the air, which interposes, be in great quantity, the object seen will be strongly tinged with the colour of that air; but if the air be thin, then the view of that object, and its colour, will be very little obstructed.   be the colour of distant objects, the darkest, whether natural or accidental, will appear the most tinged with azure. By the natural darkness is meant the proper colour of the object; the accidental one is produced by the shadow of some other body.   first part of any colour which is lost by the distance, is the gloss, being the smallest part of it, as a light within a light. The second that diminishes by being farther removed, is the light, because it is less in quantity than the shadow. The third is the principal shadows, nothing remaining at last but a kind of middling obscurity.   azure of the sky is produced by the transparent body of the air, illumined by the sun, and interposed between the darkness of the expanse above, Rh