Reproduction of a drapery study by Leonardo da Vinci: heavy cloth falling in deep folds over a seated figure's knees, lit from the upper left, with the hollows in near-black shadow.

History · Foundations

Leonardo's Relief

Leonardo da Vinci treated light and shade as the way a flat picture gains relief: the look of solid, rounded form.

He studied how light falls on faces and folds of cloth and wrote about it at length.

  • Studies of drapery like this one let him work out light on folds in detail.
  • In 1897 the drawing teacher Anson Cross reproduced this study to show the care great artists took over light and shade.

Image: Internet Archive · Public domain (published before 1931)

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