Sebastiano Ricci helped revitalize Venetian art at the beginning of the eighteenth century by adopting rich, luminous colors that made his compositions appear natural and his painting spontaneous. The Battle of the Lapiths and Centaurs depicts a subject from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. An altercation began when Pirithous, King of the Lapiths, infuriated Mars, the Roman god of war, by excluding him from his wedding celebration. To exact his revenge, Mars enlisted the centaur Eurythion to abduct Pirithous’s bride.