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- This article is about the iconographic theme. For the legendary event, see Sabine.
The Rape of the Sabine Women, an episode in the legendary early history of Rome narrated by Plutarch ('Lives' II, 14 and 19), provided a subject for Renaissance and post-Renaissance works of art that combined a suitably inspiring example of the hardihood and courage of ancient Romans in their vigorous prime with the opportunity to depict multiple figures in intensely passionate struggle.
Comparable themes from Classical Antiquity are the Battle of the Lapiths and Centaurs and the theme of Amazonomachy, the battle of Theseus with the Amazons. A comparable opportunity drawn from Christian legend was afforded by the theme of the Massacre of the Innocents.
Giambologna's Rape of the Sabine Women
The sculpture by Giambologna (1579–1583) reinterpreted as expressing this theme depicts three figures (a man lifting a woman into the air while a second man crouches) and was carved from a single block of marble. Originally intended as nothing more than a demonstration of the artist's ability to create a complex sculptural group, its subject matter, the mythical rape of the Sabines, had to be invented after Francesco de' Medici, the Grand Duke of Florence decreed that it be put on public display in the Loggia dei Lanzi in Piazza della Signoria. True to mannerist densely-packed, intertwined figural compositions and ambitious overinclusive, efforts, the statue renders a dynamic panoply of emotions, poses, and multiple viewpoints. When contrasted with either the serene single-viewpoint statuary of the nearby David of Michelangelo (finished nearly 80 years before), this statue shows the infusing tenor of motion that leads towards Baroque, but the tight, uncomfortable, verticality— self-imposed by the author's virtuosic restriction to a composition that could be carved from a single block of marble— lacks the dynamic diagonality that Bernini would achieve forty years later with his Rape of Proserpine and Apollo and Daphne, both at the Galleria Borghese, Rome.The proposed site for the sculpture, opposite Benvenuto Cellini's statue of Perseus, prompted suggestions that the group should illustrate a theme related to the former work, such as the rape of Andromeda by Phineus. The respective rapes of Proserpina and Helen were also mooted as possibile themes. It was eventually decided that the sculpture was to be identified as one of the Sabine virgins being abducted by the Romans in an episode from the early history of Latium.
The work is signed OPVS IOANNIS BOLONII FLANDRI MDLXXXII ("The work of Johannes of Boulogne of Flanders, 1582"). An early preparatory bronze featuring only two figures is in the Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte in Naples. Giambologna then revised the scheme, this time with a third figure, in two wax models now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. The artist's full-scale gesso for the finished sculpture, executed in 1582, is on display at the Accademia Gallery in Florence.
Bronze reductions of the sculpture, produced in Giambologna's own studio and imitated by others, were a staple of connoisseurs' collections into the 19th century.
Nicolas Poussin's two versions of Rape of the Sabine Women
Nicolas Poussin produced two major versions of this subject, which enabled him to display to the full his unsurpassed antiquarian knowledge together with his mastery of complicated relations of figures in dramatic encounter. One, now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, was executed in Rome, 1634-35. The second version, of 1637-38, now at the Louvre Museum, shows that, though some of the principal figures are similar, he had not exhausted the subject. The architectural setting is more developed.Other artists' versions
Peter Paul Rubens' Rape of the Sabine Women, painted about 1635-40, is at the National Gallery, London.Jacques-Louis David painted the correlative theme, of The Sabine Women Enforcing Peace by throwing themselves between the opposing forces of Romans and Sabines. He worked on this canvas during the war years of 1796-99. It is in the Louvre Museum.
Pablo Picasso deconstructed this theme in his Rape of the Sabine Women (1962-63), now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Literature
Steven Vincent Benet wrote a short story called "The Sobbin' Women" that parodied the legend. It was later adapted into the musical Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.
Sources
- Pope-Hennessy, John (1996). Italian High Renaissance & Baroque Sculpture, London: Phaidon
"The Rape of the Sabine Women"