ABSTRACT
Mary Seton George Frederic Watts's biography of George Frederic Watts dwells on his love for Homer, while making no mention of Ovid, and at first thought Watts's magniloquent aesthetic seems to have a greater affinity with Homeric grandeur than with the Latin poet famed for lascivia, 'a sort of playful exuberance or exuberant playfulness'. The coupling of Pheidias with Homer is, of course, traditional in idealist theories of art. The word 'translation' cleverly captures the process of recreating the forms of the sculpture in a modern painting. The word 'chaos' is emphasized in Ovid's text; he begins his account of creation by describing a state of indeterminacy quem dixere chaos, as if to stress that the word must stand arbitrarily for what is otherwise indescribable since it lacks any definite feature. In Watts's work the possibility remains open that the metamorphosis of pigment into painting may be a true analogue for the creation of the world.
