ABSTRACT
The earliest accounts of coloured shadows are to be found in the writings of Leonardo da Vinci, who investigated them both as an artist and as what people would now call a scientist. Leonardo’s language is sometimes a little obscure. It is nonetheless clear that the ideas he developed about the causes of coloured shadows shaped how he saw them, as areas coloured by the light of the sky. Coloured shadows are not so simple, of course. So, at the same time as concepts gave a definition to Leonardo’s investigation, they produced a degree of ‘aspect-blindness’ in him towards their actual causes. It seems likely, then, that the convention that shadows were colourless prevented Leonardo from making them as richly saturated as his written observations indicate that he believed them to be. Another explanation of their subdued colour is that Leonardo’s commitment to what people nowadays call a scientific method diminished his sensitivity to their phenomenology.
