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| The Abduction of the Sabine Women |
Artist:Nicolas Poussin (French, Les Andelys 1594–1665 Rome)
Date:probably 1633–34
Medium:Oil on canvas
Dimensions:60 7/8 x 82 5/8 in. (154.6 x 209.9 cm)
Classification:Paintings
Credit Line:Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1946
According to Roman mythology, the neighboring Sabines were invited to a festival with the intention of forcibly retaining their young women as wives. When the Roman leader Romulus raised his cloak, his warriors seized the women. This dramatic story gave Poussin the opportunity to display his command of gesture and pose and his knowledge of ancient sculpture and architecture. The man at the right wears a yellow lorica made of leather. The painting belonged to the maréchal de Créquy, who was the French ambassador to Rome from June 1633 to July 1634, and then to Cardinal Richelieu.
According to legend, Romulus—having settled Rome with his warrior followers—attempted to negotiate marriages for them with the neighboring Sabine tribe. When this failed he organized a festival as a ruse and invited the Sabines to attend. He is shown at the left raising the hem on his cloak in a pre-arranged signal to his men, each of whom will carry off one of the Sabine maidens, bringing her back to Rome to provide the great city with future generations. The story is told by Plutarch (Life of Romulus, XIV) as well as Livy and Virgil.
Long considered a defining masterpiece of French classical painting, this work was produced in Rome for the maréchal Charles I de Créquy (d. 1638), whose collection also included Caravaggio's The Musicians (MMA 52.81). A second, quite different, treatment of the theme is in the Musée du Louvre, Paris. The chronological relationship of the two pictures was long a matter of debate. For example, Mahon (1960) saw the Metropolitan variant as earlier, dating it between 1634 and 1635, and placing the Paris picture about 1637–38, while Blunt (1960) considered the Metropolitan's example later, from about 1637, and dated the Louvre version 1635. We now know that the New York painting is the earlier of the two. It appeared in Créquy's posthumous inventory and must have been painted about 1633–34, when he served as ambassador in Rome. More recently (Sparti 2006) the discovery of a receipt dated 1635 for The Destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna), a painting long associated stylistically (by Blunt and Mahon among others) with the Louvre work, further suggests that the two pictures may have been produced in more or less the same time period, hatching in the artist's mind as compositional and expressive alternatives.
Poussin experimented with compositional variations in a number of preliminary drawings. Spatial and figural ideas for both paintings appear in drawings in the Uffizi, Florence, and the collection of the Dukes of Devonshire, Chatsworth, both dated about 1633–34 by Rosenberg and Plat (1994). Two drawings in the Royal Collection, Windsor Castle, apparently studies for the New York composition, are dated about 1633 by Clayton (1995). Finally, Poussin's drawing from the early 1630s of Hercules and Antaeus (Ambrosiana Library, Milan) should be mentioned. An illustration for Leonardo da Vinci's treatise on painting, which greatly interested Poussin, it is closely related to one of the Windsor Castle drawings, Nude Man Lifting Up a Woman.
For the key figures of his New York composition Poussin borrowed motifs from a number of classical and classicizing sculptures, including the Roman statue of a Gaul Killing Himself and His Wife (The Ludovisi Gaul) in the Palazzo Altemps, Rome, and Giambologna's 1583 sculpture group of the subject (Rape of a Sabine Woman) in the Loggia dei Lanzi, Florence, as well as from Pietro da Cortona's 1625 painting, Rape of the Sabines in the Capitoline Museum, Rome. Poussin's knowledge of the architecture of Vitruvius and Serlio is apparent in the settings of both variants.
Blunt (1966) sites four copies of this composition in early sales and inventories, but it is not always possible to tell which version is referred to. A copy of the MMA painting was in the Warschaw Collection, Los Angeles, in 1971, and a variation of the composition made by Poussin's friend, the painter Jacques Stella, is in the Princeton Art Museum. Jean Audran engraved the MMA composition in reverse.
[Mary Sprinson de Jesús 2010]
Provenance
Maréchal Charles I de Créquy, Paris (from about 1633/34 [when he was ambassador to Rome]–d. 1638; inv. May 10, 1638, no. CXXX, valued at 350 livres); Armand-Jean du Plessis, Cardinal de Richelieu, Paris (until d. 1642; his estate, 1642–50; inv., January 29, 1643, no. 1002 bis, as "Ravissement des Sabines du sieur Poussin de quatre piedz et demy de hault sur trois piedz et demy de long . . ." valued at 1600 livres tournois; his estate sale, Paris, January 7–February 8,1650, no. 1002 bis, sold for 1620 livres tournois to Aiguillon); his niece, Marie Wignerod de Pontcourlay, duchesse d'Aiguillon, le Petit Luxembourg, Paris (1650–d. 1675; sold by her heirs to de la Ravoye); Jean Néret de La Ravoye [or Ravoir], Paris (by 1685); Bénigne de Ragois de Bretonvilliers, Paris (by 1698–d. 1700); Jaques Meijers, Rotterdam (by 1714–22; cat., 1714, pp. 5–6; his sale, Rotterdam, September 9, 1722, no. 233, as the Rape of the Sabine Women by a capable follower of Poussin, for fl. 50); Henry Hoare, Stourhead, Bath, Wilts. (by 1762–d. 1785); the Hoare family, Stourhead (1785–1857); by descent to Sir Henry Ainslie Hoare, Stourhead (1857–83; his sale, Christie's, London, June 2, 1883, no. 63; to Lesser, for £35); [Lesser, London, 1883]; Sir Francis Cook, Doughty House, Richmond, Surrey (1883–d. 1901); his son, Sir Frederick Cook, Doughty House (1901–d. 1920); his son, Sir Herbert Cook, Doughty House (1920–d. 1939); his son, Sir Francis Ferdinand Maurice Cook (1939–46); [Pinakos, Inc. (Rudolf J. Heinemann), and Knoedler, New York, 1946; sold to MMA]
Copyright Image
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