Rape of the Sabine Women in Art

The ancient legend of the abduction of the Sabine women by the men of Rome has inspired artists for centuries. Upon finding the city bereft of women, Rome’s founder, Romulus, invited the neighboring peoples to a festival as a pretense to the abduction. Each Roman youth carried off an unmarried woman from the Sabine contingent as his bride. When the Sabines later attacked Rome to reclaim their females, the women ran onto the battlefield and secured peace between their fathers and husbands.

Here we see two dramatic treatments of the subject by Italian artists Andrea Andreani and Giambologna.  Andreani, an Italian engraver, revived the technique of the chiaroscuro print, the use of light and shadow to define three-dimensional objects, at the end of the sixteenth century and created a number of ambitious works including a reproduction of Andrea Mantegna's "Triumph of Caesar".  Some evidence exists that ancient Greek and Roman artists used chiaroscuro effects but the technique was first brought to its full potential by Leonardo da Vinci in the late 15th century.  Andreani's 1585 woodcut, Rape of the Sabines,  reproduces, to scale but with slight adjustments, the plaque that was intended to clarify the subject of Giambologna's celebrated marble group in the Loggia dei Lanzi in Florence which had been unveiled in Florence in 1583 to public acclaim.

The original woodcut is printed in three sections on six sheets of paper. To make a chiaroscuro woodcut, the key block was inked with the darkest tone and printed first. Subsequent blocks were inked with progressively lighter tones and carefully measured to print in register with the key block. Chiaroscuro woodcuts are usually printed in only one color, brown, gray, green, or sepia being preferred. The process attempted to imitate wash and watercolor drawings and also became popular as an inexpensive method of reproducing paintings. The print in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art is a rather harsh orange.  Whether this was intended to be brown or sepia I'm not sure.  I thought the color obscures the details, though, so I have converted it to black and white and adjusted the saturation and contrast to showcase the intricacies of Andreani's work. 

The sculpture is the original work of Gaimbologna's "Kidnapping of the Sabine Women" on display in the Loggia dei Lanzi in Florence that the woodcut is based upon. The full length image is courtesy of Wikimedia Commons contributor Thermos.  The detailed closeups are my own images taken in Florence in 2005.

Rape of the Sabines chiaroscuro woodcut by Andrea Andreani, 1585

Kidnapping of the Sabines by Giambologna, 1574-1582

Detail of Kidnapping of the Sabines by Giambologna, 1574-1582

Kidnapping of the Sabines by Giambologna, 1574-1582

Kidnapping of the Sabines by Giambologna, 1574-1582

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Capitoline Wolf Dated to 13th Century

It's rather ironic that just before I left for lunch today I lovingly touched the reproduction of the Capitoline wolf that I have on my bookcase before walking out the door. I returned and read the article below. Oh well, I'm sure the original wolf was just as enchanting. Sadly, it was probably the victim of the metal "meltdowns" that were widespread in the Roman Empire during the Dark Ages.

"A statue symbolising the mythical origins and power of Rome, long thought to have been made around 500BC, has been found to date from the 1200s.

The statue depicts a she-wolf suckling Remus and his twin brother Romulus - who is said to have founded Rome.

The statue of the wolf was carbon-dated last year, but the test results have only now been made public.

The figures of Romulus and Remus have already been shown to be 15th Century additions to the statue.

In a front page article in the Italian newspaper, La Repubblica, Rome's former top heritage official, Professor Adriano La Regina, said about 20 tests were carried out on the she-wolf at the University of Salerno.

He said the results of the tests gave a very precise indication that the statue was manufactured in the 13th Century.

Damaged paw

Academics have been arguing about the origins of the statue - known as the Lupa Capitolina - since the 18th Century.

Until recently it was widely acknowledged that the statue was an Etruscan work dating from the 5th Century BC.

The Roman statesman, Cicero, who lived in the 1st Century BC, describes a statue of a she-wolf that was damaged by a lightning strike - the Lupa Capitolina has a damaged paw.

However, in 2006, an Italian art historian and restorer, Anna Maria Carruba, argued that the statue had been cast in a single piece using a wax mould - a technique unknown in the ancient world.

She suggested the damage to the Lupa Capitolina's paw was the result of a mistake in the moulding process."

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Site of ancient Lupercalia found in excavations on the Palatine Hill

Italian archaeologists have inched closer to unearthing the secrets behind one of Western civilization's most enduring legends.

On Tuesday, the government released photographs of a deep cavern where some archaeologists claim that ancient Romans honored Romulus and Remus, the legendary founders of Rome.

The cavern, now buried 16 meters, or 52 feet, under the ruins of Emperor Augustus's palace on the Palatine Hill, has a height of 7.1 meters and a diameter of 6.5 meters. Photographs taken of the cave by a camera probe show a domed cavern decorated with extremely well-preserved colored mosaics and seashells. At the center of the vault is a painted white eagle, a symbol of the Roman Empire.

"This could reasonably be the place bearing witness to the myth of Rome," Italy's minister of culture, Francesco Rutelli, said at a news conference in Rome on Tuesday where a half-dozen photos were displayed to journalists.

The myth concerns Lupercal, whose name comes from "wolf" and refers to the mythical cave where Romulus and Remus - the sons of the god Mars who were abandoned by the banks of the Tiber - were found by a female wolf who suckled them until they were found and raised by a shepherd named Faustulus. The brothers are said to have gone on to found Rome on April 21, 753 B.C., with the legend culminating in fratricide when Romulus killed his twin in a power struggle.

The cave later became a sacred location where the priests of Lupercus celebrated certain ceremonies until A.D. 494. At that time Pope Gelasius put an end to the practice.

It is that location that has been discovered, according to some leading archaeologists. Its presence was first announced in January by Irene Iacopi, the archaeologist in charge of the Palatine. It was found during restoration work on the palace of Augustus, Rome's first emperor, after workers took core samples from the hill and were then alerted to the possible presence of the cave.

"This is one of the most important discoveries of all time," Andrea Carandini one of Italy's most renowned archaeologists, said Tuesday.

Carandini has long held that the myths of ancient Rome, at least in some slightly altered iteration, could quite possibly be true, and so he derived added satisfaction from the find.

"The fact that this sanctuary is under the lower part of the house of Augustus is significant because Augustus was a kind of Romulus himself who refounded Rome and he did it in the place where Romulus had been," he said.

The positioning of the cave, discovered at the base of a hill between the Temple of Apollo and the Church of St. Anastasia, could prove to be problematic for continued excavation.

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