On November 10, 2025, La Poste (the French postal service) issued a stamp in its art series featuring Jacques-Louis David's painting, The Sabine Women, to commemorate the bicentenary of his death.
This painting resonates with postal history, as the definitive stamp issued from 1977 to 1982, called The Sabine Woman of Gandon, featured the head of the heroine Hersilia, depicted at the center of Jacques-Louis David's painting.
David was fifty years old when he finished painting the immense canvas of The Sabine Women. The painter had already achieved renown following the success of his Oath of the Horatii in 1785: his rigorous, energetic, and pure vision of ancient Roman history propelled David to the forefront of French painting. But in the meantime, the artist suffered from a negative reputation stemming from his total political commitment to the Revolution during its most radical phase, beginning in September 1792. Robespierre's political downfall at the end of July 1794 led to the downfall of his friend David. Imprisoned for several months, he was accused of having compromised himself in a government now reduced to the notion of the "Terror." Captivity prompted the painter to return to his art: among several ideas he conceived at that time, that of the Sabine Women would find its culmination five years later. The subject has rarely been depicted: it is not the famous episode of the abduction of the Sabine women by the first Romans. The action takes place a few months later, when the Sabines, driven by a thirst for revenge, attack the city near Rome to reclaim their daughters and sisters. But the women, already mothers, intervene. For the first time in his career, David entrusted the central action of a major historical painting to a woman: Hersilia orders her husband Romulus to cease his battle against Tatius, King of the Sabines. Around her appear six women of all ages, expressing the sentiments of humanity that triumph over the impulses of vengeance driving men. In the climate of latent civil war that characterized the young French Republic, David's The Sabine Women thus resonates as a call for national reconciliation. The painting also encourages us to heed the political wisdom of women, largely forgotten by revolutionary progress.
