The Intervention of the Sabine Women

Hersilia throws herself between two armies, arms flung wide, as Sabine women and their children rush into the no-man's-land to stop their husbands and fathers from killing one another. Jacques-Louis David fills the canvas with heroic nude warriors and pleading mothers, turning the legend into a call for reconciliation - painted after the bloodshed of the Revolution and its Terror. Now in the Louvre, the Intervention of the Sabine Women shifts his art from stern martial oath-taking toward an appeal for peace, the women's courage halting the cycle of vengeance.