The Rape of the Sabine Women

In 1824 Parliament voted the money to buy 38 pictures from the estate of John Julius Angerstein, a London marine underwriter, and to keep them on show in his house on Pall Mall. That purchase was the National Gallery, and this panel came in with it. Its inventory number is still 38.

Rubens painted it late, probably between 1635 and 1640, from the Roman legend of Romulus seizing the women of a neighbouring people to supply his new city with wives. He staged it between columns and hanging garlands, with Romulus in silhouette giving the signal, and he graded the crowd by distance, the front figures in strong colour, the middle in pale tints, the back only sketched.

The women wear the satin and lace of wealthy Antwerp in Rubens's own century, the clothes his neighbours had on while he was painting them.