The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci — Volume 1 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 360 pages of information about The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci — Volume 1.

The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci — Volume 1 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 360 pages of information about The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci — Volume 1.

The figures which are between you and the light, if they be at a distance, will appear dark on a light background, and the lower part of their legs near the ground will be least visible, because there the dust is coarsest and densest [19].  And if you introduce horses galloping outside the crowd, make the little clouds of dust distant from each other in proportion to the strides made by the horses; and the clouds which are furthest removed from the horses, should be least visible; make them high and spreading and thin, and the nearer ones will be more conspicuous and smaller and denser [23].  The air must be full of arrows in every direction, some shooting upwards, some falling, some flying level.  The balls from the guns must have a train of smoke following their flight.  The figures in the foreground you must make with dust on the hair and eyebrows and on other flat places likely to retain it.  The conquerors you will make rushing onwards with their hair and other light things flying on the wind, with their brows bent down,

[Footnote:  19—­23.  Compare 608. 57—­75.]

602.

and with the opposite limbs thrust forward; that is where a man puts forward the right foot the left arm must be advanced.  And if you make any one fallen, you must show the place where he has slipped and been dragged along the dust into blood stained mire; and in the half-liquid earth arround show the print of the tramping of men and horses who have passed that way.  Make also a horse dragging the dead body of his master, and leaving behind him, in the dust and mud, the track where the body was dragged along.  You must make the conquered and beaten pale, their brows raised and knit, and the skin above their brows furrowed with pain, the sides of the nose with wrinkles going in an arch from the nostrils to the eyes, and make the nostrils drawn up—­which is the cause of the lines of which I speak—­, and the lips arched upwards and discovering the upper teeth; and the teeth apart as with crying out and lamentation.  And make some one shielding his terrified eyes with one hand, the palm towards the enemy, while the other rests on the ground to support his half raised body.  Others represent shouting with their mouths open, and running away.  You must scatter arms of all sorts among the feet of the combatants, as broken shields, lances, broken swords and other such objects.  And you must make the dead partly or entirely covered with dust, which is changed into crimson mire where it has mingled with the flowing blood whose colour shows it issuing in a sinuous stream from the corpse.  Others must be represented in the agonies of death grinding their teeth, rolling their eyes, with their fists clenched against their bodies and their legs contorted.  Some might be shown disarmed and beaten down by the enemy, turning upon the foe, with teeth and nails, to take an inhuman and bitter revenge.  You might see some riderless horse rushing among the enemy, with his mane flying in the wind, and doing

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The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci — Volume 1 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.