The camera was similar enough to the old SLR's and automatics with which I was familiar, but I had to read the manual carefully to understand the various options for caption, review, preferences and so forth. The camera I was about to use allows one to browse the images already captured (in normal English - the pictures taken onto a digital care) in an LCD viewer. This all seemed relatively straightforward, so I put the camera down and turned to the manual on the software interface. I recognized that I would have the option to choose between a jpeg format and another unknown format. I chose the jpeg since my plan is to include these pictures in a classroom presentation using the internet.
A digital camera has two types of software: one goes into your computer and allows you to view, manipulate, store, organize, print and often e-mail images. The other resides inside the camera. Kodak calls this firmware. I learned a bit about it by reading documentation on the website for the manufacturer of the camera I was using.
The trouble started when I tried to install the software which would only work with Windows 95. An update on the manufacturer's website was supposed to allow users with NT to use this software. I downloaded this update, followed the instructions to expand the compressed file, but still had no idea where to begin. Sure, there were a few new files in my /temp directory, but nothing came up in the start menu under programs as the user's guide suggested. Nor could I get any action by clicking on the program *.exe file. It was time to call the manufacturer.
They were great. They told me exactly what file to download and where to store it. I followed the instructions, unzipped the file, and watched with pleasure as the install program appeared on the screen. Hopefully I would now get icons and menus that looked like those in the user's manual.
Unfortunately, the install stopped working at the point where the computer had to find the camera. I followed the instructions and put in new batteries. I clicked on the icon again. The install stopped at the same place. This time it wanted me to change the port and control settings. I was now beyond the realm of my expertise, patience, and desire for challenge. I gave up and took the digital camera back. Next time I'll try a camera that is supposed to work with Windows NT.
Here is the letter I downloaded from Brigham Young University Special Collections, Life, Death and Miracles of Saint Jerome, French, c. 1495-1515, .Quarto 091 H532 (350 x 245 mm).
I got the image on the screen in Netscape and had this Wordperfect file in another window. I tried the edit menu in Netscape but got only the selections copy and select all. Neither allowed me to cut and paste the image into this text. So I tried to save the jpeg image as a separate file. It was called capital C. And it worked. Here it is!
Now the next challenge is to see if I can modify it into a E using an image editor. I'll try photoshop. Be patient. I've never used it before.
I called up photoshop and got a blank page with a whole lot of options. I decided to start by calling up the file "capital C". This worked fine. It looked exactly as it does above. I discovered that I could zoom in an out. The question to discover was this: how could I draw and erase to transform it, and change the background color?
I tried highlighting the gold and deleting the background, but this did not get the entire C, which is somewhat darker at the ends. I didn't want to spend anymore time on this, so I left it for another more tenacious and technologically savvy individual.
Here is one of Leonardo's texts, taken from Madrid Manuscript II (folio 73r), dated about 1505, and copied into section 240 of the Treatise on Painting (Vatican Codex Urbinas 1270, folio 73r):
In English translation, this reads:Della prospectiva che colori ne lochi osscuri
Ne lochi luminosi uniformemente disforme insino alle tenebre quel colore sara piu chiaro1 osscuro che da esso occhio sia piu remoto.
1 This word, cancelled by the scribe, begins a phrase which is found in the autograph notebook but was omitted by the scribe from the Codex Urbinas, which reads "chessia piu vicino allochio e cosi sara piu..."
On color perspective in dark places
In places where the light drops off gradually into darkness, that color will be {light that is nearer the eye and similarly will be} darker that is farther from the eye. [translator: Janis Bell]
In the Brigham Young Manuscript, folio 45 verso shows St. Jerome traveling on horseback through a woods in which masons are building in the background. You may notice that the rocks and trees in the foreground are shown in full color, while those in the background are quite dark. Similarly, the figures in the foreground wear clothes of vivid reds and blues, while the masons are a monochrome greyish blue, their flesh and clothing shown in the same hue.
A detail of the background shows more clearly this nearly monochrome and desaturated coloration. The illumination within the forest is dimmer than it is in the foreground. Hence the colors get darker, as Leonardo explains.
Now before downloading this image and mounting it on the web, I must secure copyright. No instructions were given on the Brigham Young University Library home page. So I sent an e-mail to the contact person listed on the page: Jesse_Hurlbut@byu.edu
In case I should want to project these images as part of a lecture, I recorded the URL addresses. Here is the url for St. Jerome traveling in a landscape:
http://www.byu.edu/~hurlbut/dscriptorium/byu/jerome/byu-j14.jpgand the url for a detail of masons in the background:
http://www.byu.edu/~hurlbut/dscriptorium/byu/jerome/byu-j14d.jpg
I got this information in the following way. First I clicked on the image from the main BYU page to have a full screen view. Then, I highlighted the address in the browser window, hit Ctrl-C (or one can highlight copy with the edit menu), and pasted the URL into my word processing document using Ctrl-V. If I were going to project these images in a classroom lecture, I could go directly to the URL for each images. No copyright permission is necessary to use the images in this way. If I wanted to put my lecture outlines on the internet or set up a study guide, I could set up these addresses as links in HTML format. Then I would just have to click on the titled link to call up the image.
Returning to my essay-lecture on color perspective, I now want to explore the context of Leonardo's text, using a commentary on this text that I had written for a website on Leonardo da Vinci's Treatise on Painting that references his own writings, those of predecessors and contemporaries, and relates his ideas to pictorial practice.
In Leonardo's theory of color perspective, a major variable affecting the appearance of color was the medium through which colors were seen. In most conditions in nature, the illumination of the medium would determine the brightness of color. If the medium were light, the colors would look light; if the medium were dark, the colors would look dark. Another variable was the color of the medium, as discussed in texts such as Vatican Codex Urbinas 193r-v (§ 654) {McMahon 793}, and Vatican Codex Urbinas 140r-v (§ 438) {McMahon 741}.
Leonardo's idea that dark colors should appear farther from the eye parallels pictorial practice from the time of Giotto. In the Flight into Egypt in the Arena Chapel, Padua (1305), the more distant mountain is rendered in a darker grey than the nearer mountain.
As I now wish to include a illustration of Giotto's image, which is frequently used in survey texts, I go to the Prentice-Hall website and other sites with images from survey texts which can be found in the links on the Visual Resources Fine Arts page. A search at http://www.prenhallart.com/html/search/search2.htm under the artist's name, Giotto, yielded two pages with images of the Arena chapel.
The image at http://jcccnet.johnco.cc.ks.us/~jjackson/Giotto/g20.jpg had coloring that was not pleasing to me but since the other link did not work, and this image showed the darkened color of the more distant mountain, I have included it here. If I had more time, I would continue to search for a more accurate color reproduction.
Cennino Cennini, Il Libro dell'Arte, recommended darkening distant forms in chapter 85 "On the way to paint a mountain, in fresco or in secco". Leon Battista Alberti in De pictura / Della pittura (1436) still recommended this practice in Book 1, 7.
By the mid-15th century, the practice of color perspective distinguished between outdoor landscapes and indoor scenes. Leonardo's own paintings with landscape backgrounds show distant forms getting successively lighter in tone. However, his early theory of color perspective still included recommendations for darker mountains in the distance.
Here are some examples which I have linked or downloaded from the internet, using www.scournet.com.
In the Virgin of the Rocks (London, National Gallery), for which you can see a full-screen image at http://www.oir.ucf.edu/wm//paint/auth/vinci/rocks.jpg there is a glimpse through the rocky grotto of distant mountains. The mountains closest to the foreground are greyish in hue and have noticeable variations in lightness between their illuminated and their shadowed sides. As the mountains get further away, their hue gets progressively closer to the light blue of the sky, and the contrast in modeling tones (light and dark tones) diminishes so that the mountains appear nearly monochrome.
A progressive lightening of the color of mountains is also seen in the background of the Madonna and Child with St. Anne (Paris, Louvre) for which a full-screen detail may be found at http://www2.iinet.com/art/15th/italian/da_vinci/vinci44.jpg. Here the mountains are a greyish brown, and gradually lighten with the increasing distance to match the pale color of the sky. The absence of a blue in the distant mountains and sky is atypical, and may be due to the unfinished condition of the work, to the buildup of varnish, or to extensive pigment losses that this painting has suffered. One hopes that the issue will be addressed in a publication of the Louvre detailing the results of a preliminary laboratory investigation of the painting in the early 1990's.
In contrast to the progressive lightening of color in outdoor landscapes under the bright sky, Leonardo describes in CU 73 § 240 how the colors get successively darker in indoor scenes and other dark places, such as a forest, giving the reason that light fails in the distance. Leonardo had observed and had read information on the optics of candlelight, which diminishes in intensity in proportion to the increase in distance. His advice here is an extension of this scientific principle, not a contradiction of his advice on color perspective in illuminated places such as landscapes open to the sky.
In such situations of limited light, there is a pictorial advantage to the gradual darkening of color. It sets up a perspective recession which indicates the distance of figures and objects. Thus, together with overlapping, linear perspective recession, acuity perspective and/or the perspective of diminishing modeling tones (contrast perspective), the perspective of color enhances the relievo of multifigure compositions.
Here are a few examples of this practice, which became especially widespread in the early decades of the Cinquecento.
Bernardo Luini, one of several Milanese painters associated with Leonardo, used this practice as a device to focus attention on the more highly illuminated central foreground figures. I was not able to find a suitable example of one Luini's paintings in the time allotted since his works are never included in general surveys and rarely explored in Renaissance art surveys. If I had more time, I would explore various museum websites.
Michelangelo used it frescos in the Sistine chapel (1508-12). It is particularly evident in some of the lunettes showing the ancestors of Chris such as Ozias, where the two figures behind the suckling child are quite darkened in value to make them recede. Ozias comes forward due to his frontal placement, his lighter highlights and generally greater contrast in modeling tones, and the touches of white in his costume: the turban, cuff of his sleeve, and scarf over his shoulders. [For a full screen but heavily-pixilated image, see http://www.christusrex.org/www1/sistine/29c-Ozias.jpg. To read about Caravaggio's use of white to bring figures forward in The Supper at Emmaus (London, National Gallery), see Janis Bell, "Light and Color in Caravaggio's Supper at Emmaus" in Artibus et Historiae, 1995.)
The principle of darkening color is also operative in Michelangelo's Last Judgement, especially now that color relationships have become evident since the restoration in the 1990's. One sees this throughout the scene as a device to clarify spatial relationship, and it is especially prominent in the large crowds at ground level, where Charon ferries the damned souls into Hell. For a full screen image, see http://www.christusrex.org/www1/sistine/40j-I.jpg.
Rosso Fiorentino's Marriage of the Virgin in the church of San Lorenzo in Florence is another example. Here the space is exquisitely orchestrated with color. The lightest colors are in the foreground -- on the saints on the steps, Elizabeth and Catherine, as well as the standing Dominic and the two embracing youths. These lead us back to the still light but more richly colored garments of Mary, Joseph and the attendants flanking them. The head of the priest stands out with his white miter, but significantly, his torso is clothed in a darker brown which recedes to keep our focus on the principal actors in the narrative. Behind them, all the colors are darker. In the figures crowded behind the priest, the hues are still varied and the flesh tones somewhat ruddy. The range of modeling tones is more limited but still sufficient to produce an effect of rounded forms. All this has changed in the upper level, where the draperies and flesh tones are nearly monochrome brown with the exception of a few areas that receive a spot of light.
To see a full screen image of this painting, go to http://metalab.unc.edu/cjackson/fiorentino/p-fiorentino10.htm.
From these few examples, we can see that the practice of darkening color to create the effect of spatial recession, which Leonardo described in his Treatise on Painting, continued throughout much of the sixteenth-century in Renaissance Italy. It could take the form of lowering color values from lighter to darker shades, of diminishing color saturation from brighter to duller shades, or of actual changing color hues from the more chromatic colors to browns and greys.