Leonardo and Light

According to Mark Balma,  Leonard Da Vinci was an innovator in the realm of painting, as well as his many other inventions.  In the previous tradition before Leonardo, painters would start out with a toned ground or imprimatura to set the canvas tone somewhere between bright white and very dark.  An artist could then base the applied lights and darks on that middle ground.  However, Leonardo had another idea.  Instead building white on top of a colored wash, Leonardo wanted to take advantage of the light reflecting from the white canvas itself.  This meant he needed more transparent layers in contrast to the opaque paints in common usage. 

Artists who painted with pigments ground into oil alone were limited by the thickness of the oil and the tendency of some oils to yellow.  Leonardo may have learned from the musical instrument makers of his time, who coated their violins with protective transparent layers of varnish made with spike lavender, walnut oil and resins.  In similar fashion, Leonardo learned to make his paints more transparent so the light could pass through, often adding 20 layers of paint, in contrast to the 2 or 3 layers previous paintings often had.   This allowed him to do highly complex renderings of lights and shadows, and is a gift to all artists thereafter who wish to paint in a similar style.