Faldoni, parts 2704 - 2707

 2704. The answer to this question is obvious. First is the consideration that the color of an area is affected and changes the color that surrounds it. Faldoni noticed this when he kept finding that when he painted the backgrounds after painting his faces, the colors of the faces seemed to change.

 2705. So, if a color changes as its neighboring colors are changed, so the last colors to be put into a picture are the only ones that can be completely accurate and perfect, unless the artist goes back and changes all the original colors, which is not possible with fresco painting. The borders of the paintings were painted last, since they took so long to complete and so the tints in the borders ended up being adjusted to perfection.

 2706. But how were the colors adjusted to perfection? They were adjusted in the same way Faldoni’s flesh color was adjusted, but the addition of minute amounts of extra colors to the tints already mixed up in jars. As Faldoni worked he was constantly adding a tiny amount of green to his red, or purple to his yellow, or black to his greens, adjusting and  tuning the colors as a violinist tunes the strings of an instrument.

2707. He never thought about the fact that he was altering the colors in-order for them to be more harmonious, he did it automatically, simply because the result was more satisfying to his eye. Like with all of the hundreds of faces he had painted, his borders contained thousands of little shapes, and each shape was altered very slightly to bring it into harmony with its neighbors.