The Rape of the Sabine Women - Nicolas Poussin, c. 1633–1638

The Rape of the Sabine Women

Nicolas Poussin, c. 1633–1638
Oil on canvas | Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York & Musée du Louvre, Paris

Nicolas Poussin’s Rape of the Sabine Women is one of the most powerful visual interpretations of a foundational Roman myth—one rooted in violence, strategy, and political necessity. The story comes from ancient Roman legend: soon after founding Rome, Romulus found his fledgling city full of men and devoid of wives. To solve this, he invited the neighboring Sabines to a festival, only to have his soldiers abduct their daughters at a pre-arranged signal. The Sabine men, betrayed and enraged, would eventually wage war on Rome—only to be stopped by the women themselves, who by then had become wives and mothers, pleading for peace between their fathers and their new husbands.

Poussin painted this story twice. The first version, dated around 1633–1634 and now housed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, is set against the backdrop of a freshly built Roman forum. Romulus stands elevated on the left, raising his robe—the signal for abduction. What follows is a cinematic scene of chaos: Roman soldiers seizing women, Sabine fathers resisting, mothers weeping, and infants crying. One of the most striking vignettes shows a man dragging away a woman while fending off her elderly father, who clings desperately to his waist. The composition is dense, sculptural, and emotionally raw.

The second version, completed a few years later around 1637–1638 and now in the Louvre, presents the same story but with a more refined architectural backdrop and a different emotional tone. While still charged with movement and drama, this painting features more open space and classical symmetry. Romulus again gives the signal from a raised platform, but now the surrounding city is shown in grand Roman style, and the figures are more gracefully arranged. The chaos is present, but controlled—a testament to Poussin’s evolving style.

Both paintings reflect Poussin’s deep engagement with antiquity. He drew on Roman sculpture, Renaissance cassoni (marriage chests), and even earlier artworks on the same subject—especially Giambologna’s famed sculpture of the Rape of the Sabines. In the New York version, a group of figures seems directly inspired by classical marbles like The Galatian Suicide, recently unearthed in Rome at the time. His figures are not just players in a myth—they are rendered as living statues, embodying the ideals of heroic tragedy and stoic resolve.

But the emotional resonance of these paintings goes far beyond academic composition. Poussin turns a brutal myth into a meditation on civilization: how it is built, who pays the price, and what happens when power overrides morality. Despite the violence of the subject, the works are not gratuitous. They are calculated, restrained, and intellectually charged, inviting viewers to think deeply about history and human nature.

Centuries later, artists would revisit Poussin’s interpretation as a lens for their own times. In 1974, Peruvian artist Herman Braun-Vega created a series of paintings based on the Sabine Women, updating the imagery with references to modern political violence—consumer culture, dictatorship, terrorism—reminding us that the struggle between power and humanity is never far from the surface.

The Rape of the Sabine Women is a landmark in Baroque painting, not because it is beautiful, but because it dares to show the cost of empire and the complexity of myth. Through his dual versions, Poussin offers not just a dramatic story, but a visual philosophy of history.