A Story from Boccaccio

Watts painted 'A Story from Boccaccio' in 1845, the year of his return to England from his formative Italian sojourn, bringing with him a deepened knowledge of Renaissance painting and a mature ambition to pursue figurative narrative in the grand tradition. Boccaccio's 'Decameron' had been a rich source for European painters since the fifteenth century, providing stories of human love, wit, and pathos that could be treated with both moral and aesthetic seriousness. For Watts, who was consolidating his approach to literary narrative painting after years of Italian study, the subject offered an opportunity to demonstrate his Italian-influenced figure style on a Florentine literary subject. The National Gallery's canvas documents this transitional moment when Watts was finding his mature direction after absorbing the lessons of Titian, Tintoretto, and Michelangelo. The intimate storytelling quality of Boccaccio aligned naturally with Watts's interest in psychological narrative.

The oil on canvas shows clear debts to the Venetian colourists Watts studied in Italy — warm, golden atmospheric light, richly rendered draperies, and a compositional approach that uses colour relationships to structure the narrative scene. The figure style is more classically idealised than his Pre-Raphaelite contemporaries would permit, reflecting his commitment to the Italian grand manner tradition.