ABSTRACT
A brief overview of the multifold significations of Giambologna's Rape of a Sabine suggests that its virtuosity resides not only in the serpentine arrangement of the figures but also in the way in which the group gives visible expression to the intertwined values and aspirations of patron, public, and artist at once. When sixteenth-century family and political theorists attempted to revive Roman family law and the absolute control of husbands and fathers over their womenfolk, they invoked the rape of the Sabines as an exemplary tale. This chapter considers Rubens's Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus painting not as a revelation of primal human nature but as a phenomenon of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century European culture. Imagining that Rubens's painting does commemorate this nuptial alliance makes it possible to appreciate the appropriateness of Rubens's erotic transformation of the triumphal arch decoration of 1571.
