Abduction of the Sabine Women

Johann Heinrich Schönfeld was a Swabian painter who spent two decades in Rome and Naples before returning to Germany, synthesising the influences of Italian Baroque painting — Poussin's classical order, Neapolitan naturalism, and the drama of Caravaggio's followers — into an eclectic but distinctive personal manner. This ca. 1640 Abduction of the Sabine Women belongs to the grand tradition of history painting that treated the founding myths of Rome with the full resources of Baroque figure composition and dramatic action. The Sabine rape — Roman men seizing Sabine women as wives in the city's founding generation — was one of the standard subjects for demonstrating facility with complex multi-figure compositions, and Schönfeld's version shows the animated, somewhat theatrical quality he brought to such ambitious subjects during his Italian years. His return to Augsburg spread Italian Baroque conventions into the art of southern Germany.

Schönfeld organises the turbulent scene with a strong diagonal thrust through the composition, the abducting figures and resisting women creating a complex interlocking pattern of bodies. His Italian training is evident in the dramatic contrapposto of the figures and the warm, energetic brushwork that conveys the violence of the action.