Somebody’s Reviews > Shadows: The Depiction of Cast Shadows in Western Art > Status Update

There is no doubt that Leonardo here followed the tendency of his generation to react strongly against the hard-edged clarity of Quattrocento paintings.

What the art historian has trained himself to notice, in his turn, is the selectivity of the painter's 'eye', or rather the range of features artists of different media, schools and periods have chosen to construct their images of the visible world.

Painters see more in shadows and protrusions than we ever do. - Cicero

A pleasing confusion was something that Dutch painters of still life had achieved in the 17th century... an overturned vessel of reflective silver, a transparent glass, a candle, a skull and a watch... were often intended not merely to please but to stimulate thoughts of mortality and the vanity of worldly possessions and aspirations.

A cast shadow could add drama as well as reality.

Because translucency is itself a property of shadows (we see things through them) one may add that the history of this subject is tied up with the history of oil painting,because the application of a translucent glaze was frequently the most effective method of rendering a shadow.

It may often be observed that companion portraits of married couples show the light coming from different sides because they were intended to hang opposite one another. In art galleries they are nearly always hung side by side, and few people seem to notice the inconsistency of the lighting.

Artists would often ad just the light in an altarpiece to correspond to the direction in which daylight would fall in the chapel where it was displayed. Even in picture galleries it seems to have been a factor that determined the way paintings were hung.