I finally finished my interpretation of this magnificent sculpture after a long year. When working on a project that long, I would learn how to do certain techniques better and kept wanting to go back and redo areas. But I was finally able to pull it all together. A little info:
The Rape of the Sabine Women is an episode in the legendary history of Rome in which the first generation of Roman men acquired wives for themselves from the neighboring Sabine families. (In this context, rape means abduction - raptio - rather than its prevalent modern meaning of sexual violation.)
Titus Livius is clear that no sexual assault took place. On the contrary, Romulus offered them free choice and promised civic and property rights to women. According to Livy he spoke to them each in person, “and pointed out to them that it was all owing to the pride of their parents in denying right of intermarriage to their neighbors. They would live in honorable wedlock, and share all their property and civil rights, and - dearest of all to human nature - would be the mothers of free men.”
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