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Italy, and particularly Florence, was perpetual fascination and inspiration to Watts. There he imbibed the influences of Orcagna and Titian influences, indeed, which were clearly represented in the next monumental painting which he attempted.
Kant, Buffon, Goethe, Fontenelle, and Newton were all over eighty. Michael Angelo and Titian lived to eighty-nine and ninety-nine respectively. Harvey, the discoverer of the circulation; Hans Sloane, the celebrated president of the Royal Society in London; Plater, the Swiss physician; Duverney, the anatomist, as well as his confrere, Tenon, lived to be octogenarians.
Returning to Rome, he remained there two years, studying and copying the works of Raphael, Angelo, Titian and other masters. Occasionally, he sold his copies of masterpieces, and by practising strict economy managed to live in a fair degree of comfort. Rome is the hottest place in Summer and the coldest in Winter of which I know.
He painted every picture almost as an experiment; meaning to learn something new with every work, and he spent more than he made in perfecting his art. As he said: "He would be content to ruin himself" in order to own one of the best works of Titian. His deeds of kindness are beyond counting. He rescued his friend Dr.
Titian with his golden hues and warm haired women was very great, but Rubens, "the Fleming" as he was called, revelled in richness of colouring, and flamed through art like a glorious comet. Rubens had long been wanted in his own country. His sovereigns, Albert and Isabella, wished him to return and become their painter, but they were unable to free him from his engagements in Italy and Spain.
It is said that the works of Titian, to be appreciated, should be seen at Venice or Madrid, as many claimed to be genuine elsewhere are of very doubtful authenticity.
Titian paints nobler pictures, and Vandyke had nobler subjects, but neither of them entered so subtly as Sir Joshua did into the minor varieties of human heart and temper; arid when you consider that, with a frightful conventionality of social habitude all around him, he yet conceived the simplest types of all feminine and childish loveliness; that in a northern climate, and with gray, and white, and black, as the principal colours around him, he yet became a colourist who can be crushed by none, even of the Venetians; and that with Dutch painting and Dresden china for the prevailing types of art in the saloons of his day, he threw himself at once at the feet of the great masters of Italy, and arose from their feet to share their throne I know not that in the whole history of art you can produce another instance of so strong, so unaided, so unerring an instinct for all that was true, pure, and noble.
He admired the old Umbrian and Tuscan masters, he was ravished by the basilica of St. Francis at Assisi, and by Santa Maria Novella, Florence. Titian, Tintoretto, finally Veronese, riveted his passion for what has been falsely styled the "archaic." Returning to Paris he was conducted by his friend Beauderon to the studio of Delacroix, whom he adored.
When, as in the time of Titian, the art of the West had discovered light and shade, linear perspective, aerial perspective, &c., and had begun by fusing the edges of the masses to suspect the necessity of painting to a widely diffused focus, they had got very near considering appearances as a visual whole.
When Battisto Franco was employed, in conjunction with Titian, Paul Veronese, and Tintoret, to adorn the library of St. Mark, his work, Vasari says, gave less satisfaction than any of the others: the dry manner of the Roman school was very ill calculated to please eyes that had been accustomed to the luxuriance, splendour, and richness of Venetian colouring.
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