Workshop of Barthélemy Prieur, French, 17th century

With Daniel Katz Ltd., London, 1996;

Where acquired by the late collector.

K. Zock, European Sculpture, exhibition catalogue, Daniel Katz Limited, New York 2002, p. 92.

According to the Roman historian, Livy, the abduction of the Sabine women was an early episode in the history of Rome, in which the citizens of the then burgeoning city needed more women to help maintain the population and thus the future of the metropolis. They chose to look outside the limits of the city for these women, appealing to the Sabines for help, who fiercely rejected this plea. The Romans then devised a plan to coax the Sabines into the city by holding a festival to celebrate Neptune Equester. The present statuette captures an emotional scene from this event - the Sabine woman is shown here struggling against her Roman captor, who strides forward with unwavering determination.

Small statuettes, similar to the present work, were hallmarks of Barthélemy Prieur's oeuvre and helped sustain position as court sculptor to Henri IV.¹ Only two other versions of this current model have surfaced, one of which is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and is also given to Prieur (accession number: 25.142.13), and the other example appears to be a later cast. Although this composition is rare, the treatment of the figures is characteristic of Prieur's style. The stance of the Roman is reminiscent of that seen in his Male Nude Carrying a Child on his Shoulder, with both figures shown stepping forward, elongating their bodies, and placing their weight on their foreleg. The Sabine's hair, which is depicted with braids pinned up at the back of her heard, also draws comparison with the coiffure in Prieur's Woman Bathing, an example of which is in the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. (accession number: 1983.66.1), as well as other small bronzes of women by him.

¹G. Scherf and J. Draper (eds.), exhibition catalogue, Musée du Louvre, Paris, and J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles 2009, pp. 102 - 103.