The rape of the Sabine women. Engraving by J. Stewart, 1833, after Sir P.P. Rubens.

London (42 Circencester Place) : Published ... for the Associated Engravers, by Mr John Pye, March 1833 ([London] : Printed by McQueen)

1 print : engraving ; image 20.1 x 25.6 cm, platemark 35.4 x 50.7 cm

The rape of the Sabines. Rubens pinx.t ; J. Stewart sculp.t

"This late and sumptuous version of the subject, evidently done entirely by the artist's hand, has oftenlong before its confrontation with feminismaroused feelings of puzzlement and even distaste; it has been seen as a kind of charade, with well-dressed Flemish ladies in more or less contemporary seventeenth-century costume making what sometimes seem token protests against their ravishers. Comparisons with the poses and costumes of the women in the Garden of Love [by Rubens] seem to underline the question of Rubens's seriousness and sense of decorum. The use of the drawing of a peeping, coy girl for the Sabine cowering at her mother's knee is significant; as Roger de Piles observed, her main fear is perhaps of being overlookedalthough, he adds gallantly, 'aussi est-ce à mon avis de toutes ces Sabines celle qui merite le moins d'estre oubliée'. 'Tasteless' and 'preposterous' was what Hazlitt pronounced, and Waagen's opinion was not much more favourable. ... Roger de Piles's story that the National Gallery Rape of the Sabines was commissioned by a devoted husband does not look so preposterous. But whether or not the picture has an association with a particular courtship, it clearly reflects a view about love and marriage which Rubens's classically educated contemporariesand even perhaps their wiveswould have readily understood. Like Ovid, its most influential proponent, Rubens was not embarrassed to illustrate it"-McGrath, op. cit. p. 187-190

Elizabeth McGrath, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, part XIII (1), Subjects from history; vol. I, London 1997, pp. 184-194, no. 40, copy no. 14 (p. 186)

Wellcome Collection 3063497i

After a painting acquired by the National Gallery, London, in 1824; the third recorded engraving after the painting, and the first after its entry into the National Gallery