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Shadow is the obstruction of light. Shadows appear to me to be of supreme importance in perspective, because, without them opaque and solid bodies will be ill defined; that which is contained within their outlines and their boundaries themselves will be ill-understood unless they are shown against a background of a different tone from themselves.

— Leonardo da Vinci

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Source: in: Sean Cubitt The Practice of Light: A Genealogy of Visual Technologies from Prints to Pixels, MIT Press, 5 September 2014, p. 171
Source quality: Precise citation Points to a specific work with a page, chapter, date or similar locator, so you can look it up.

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Leonardo da Vinci (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.