A Large Patinated-Bronze Figural Group of the ‘Abduction of the Sabine Women’

Description

A Large Patinated-Bronze Figural Group of the ‘Abduction of the Sabine Women’, After the model by Giambologna.

Signed to cast ‘Jean de Bologne’.

This large bronze group of the ‘Abduction of the Sabine Women’ is a reduction of the priceless marble of the same subject by the last great sculptor of the Renaissance, Giambologna or, as he is known in French, Jean de Bologne (1529-1608). Commissioned for Cosimo I de’ Medici and standing to this day in the Loggia dei Lanzi, Florence, the group was universally celebrated and as a result copies and reductions have been created ever since.

Abduction of the Sabine Women’, by Giambologna. Loggia dei Lanzi, Florence

The sculpture depicts the legendary Roman tale as recounted by Livy and Plutarch, when during the early days of Rome, single men greatly outnumbered women and Romulus organised a festival to which he invited inhabitants of neighbouring settlements including the Sabines. At a prearranged signal, the Roman soldiers carried off the unmarried Sabine women. Although the Sabine men were later to attack Rome for this treachery, the Sabine women themselves came running to the scene of battle, many holding their new-born children, begging the two sides to call a truce and thus establishing peace.

It depicts three nude figures: a young man in the centre, who has seemingly taken a woman from a despairing older man below him. To Giambologna, it was a group which allowed him to demonstrate his skills of composition. It can be viewed from virtually every angle and was astonishing in its use of complex spiralling forms.

France, Circa 1880.