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Giambologna's third great marble group, the Rape of a Sabine, represented the climax of his career as a figure sculptor, combining three figures into a cohesive group, an idea that had obsessed Michelangelo without his ever having been permitted to realize it in marble.
Once the subject of the Rape of the Sabines in the Loggia dei Lanzi had been decided on, it became necessary to define it, and with this in mind Giambologna made for its base a bronze relief (corresponding with the relief beneath Cellini's Perseus), which could only depict the Rape of the Sabines and would thus remove all ambiguity. The bronze relief with an unambiguous narrative below the marble group acted as a sort of visual label.
In style the relief conforms to the great group above. The figures are breaking up into lucid, self-consistent units, each with a drama of its own. The foreground figures are modelled almost in the round, and each of the four main groups into which the figures are divided is planned with resilience and resource.
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