🎨 Battle of the Centaurs and the Lapiths

If anyone ever accused 19th-century French academic painting of being stiff, they hadn’t met Battle of the Centaurs and the Lapiths, a canvas so kinetic it practically throws a punch. Painted in 1852 by William-Adolphe Bouguereau during his student tenure at the French Academy in Rome, this explosive scene of mythological chaos is as much a showcase of anatomical bravura as it is of classical…