Rape of the Sabine Women (full-scale model)

In 1579 Giambologna, a Flemish sculptor who had made his career in Florence, set out to show what he could do with no commission and no set subject. The problem he gave himself was three bodies in motion, twisting upward around each other in a spiral, meant to be seen from every side. This is the full-size model, more than four metres tall, shaped in clay that was never fired. Clay like this was left to dry slowly, often with straw and flour worked in, which is why so few 16th-century models this big survive whole. The name came later, from the scholar Vincenzo Borghini, after the Roman legend of the Sabine women. Grand Duke Francesco I de' Medici moved Donatello's Judith out of the Loggia dei Lanzi to set the marble beside Cellini's Perseus, and it stands there still.