Rape of the Sabine

A fine grand tour bronze of the iconic marble sculpture from the Loggia dei Lanzi in Florence. Commissioned by Francesco de’ Medici, the work ostensibly depicts an episode from early Roman myth, where the men of Rome (led by Romulus and Remus) abducted women from the nearby Sabines, an Italic people in the Apennine mountains, to further population growth in Rome (as recounted by Livy and Cicero; Ovid focuses more directly on the sexual motive for the abduction).

This is, along with the Winged Mercury, arguably Giambologna’s most famous sculpture, a tour de force of dynamic movement captured in stone and meant to be viewed from all sides. In addition to the larger than lifesized marble (carved from a single block) in the Loggia dei Lanzi, Giambologna’s original terracotta model survives in the Accademia in Florence. Copies were already propagated by the end of the 16th century, including from the workshop of his pupil Gianfrancesco Susini (1585–1653), and remained popular in subsequent centuries (sometimes omitting the bottommost figure).

The present example is a particularly fine casting from an Italian foundry, with an appealingly weathered patina and fine detail throughout.