Abduction of the Sabine Women (c. 1640): Art, History and Details

Abduction of the Sabine Women (c. 1640) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Johann Heinrich Schönfeld (German, 1609–1684).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Shortly after Rome was founded, the Romans abducted the women of the neighboring Sabines to be their wives. During the ensuing war, the Sabine women intervened, making peace between the two sides. Painted in Naples, this canvas seems to be the last of four versions of the subject painted by Johann Schönfeld (two in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg, another in a private collection).

Object facts

• Title: Abduction of the Sabine Women
• Date: c. 1640
• Creator attribution: Johann Heinrich Schönfeld (German, 1609–1684)
• Culture: Germany
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on canvas
• Dimensions: Framed: 129 x 178 x 7.5 cm (50 13/16 x 70 1/16 x 2 15/16 in.); Unframed: 110 x 160 cm (43 5/16 x 63 in.)
• Collection: P - German before 1800
• Department: European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1982.143

Collection credit

Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Lee, Sherman E. “Year in Review for 1982.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 70, no. 1 (January 1983): 3–55.
• Pée, Herbert. “The Rape of the Sabines by Johann Heinrich Schönfeld.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 74, no. 9 (November 1987): 358–371.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.