The Reconciliation of Romans and Sabines

Ovid and Plutarch tell how the first Romans, short of wives, seized the daughters of their Sabine neighbours during a festival. Only later did the Sabines come to take the young women back, and by then many of them were pregnant or already had children. So the women placed themselves between the two sides, between their fathers and their husbands, to protect those children. That is the moment painted here. According to the Alte Pinakothek, most of this large canvas, painted around 1625, was carried out by Rubens's workshop in Antwerp, working from his design. Rubens went over one passage himself, the prominent group of three women at the centre.