Domenico Morone, 'The Rape of the Sabines (before the signal)', about 1490

Shortly after the founding of their city, the ancient Romans were faced with a serious problem: they had no wives, and therefore no children and no future. Their leader Romulus came up with an inventive and unscrupulous solution: they hosted celebratory games and invited their neighbours, the Sabines, to bring their families. At a given signal, the Romans seized the young Sabine women, carried them off and married them. Appalled at this barbarous behaviour, the Sabines waged war, but the abducted women intervened to stop the fighting. Peace was declared, and according the Roman historian Livy, ‘they made one people out of two’.

This painting is one of two from the front of a cassone, a large decorated chest that was an important piece of domestic furniture throughout Italy during the Renaissance. Cassoni were often associated with marriages, and adorned with scenes appropriate to a family environment, giving moral lessons and establishing what were then thought to be proper role models for husbands, wives and children.

Here, in the first scene, the games are shown as a joust, watched by spectators in fifteenth-century dress, with occasional classical details. In the background, the walls of Rome enclose a construction site: barren ground and a building covered in scaffolding. In the foreground, knights in armour charge each other; one on a black horse knocks another to the ground. Around them, mounted squires carry spare lances and shields, and a trumpeter blows a trumpet. A small banner hangs from the instrument labelled ‘S.P.Q.[R]’, which stands for senatus populusque romanus (the senate and people of Rome).

The men are positioned at the front of the stands while the young women, their future victims, are seated on rows of raised benches under a red awning. In the centre Romulus, wearing a toga and a crown, sits on a throne surrounded by his entourage. In front of him, three men seated at a green table act as referees.