UNKNOWN MASTER, French
(active around 1770)

The Rape of the Sabine Women

c. 1770
Oil on paper on canvas, 57 x 109 cm
National Gallery of Art, Washington

Because of the similarities to known works of the same subject by Rubens, this sketch on two separate sheets of laid paper butted together with a vertical join, was attributed to the Flemish master. However, the attribution was changed in 1973 to an eighteenth-century French artist.