Study of the Sabine Statue from the Villa Medici
1778
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
1778
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
You see a careful pencil sketch of an old marble statue: a woman in a long robe, her arms bent as if holding something. David drew this while living in Rome on a big scholarship. He wrote "Villa Medici" at the bottom, like a label. The statue is a Roman copy of a Greek work—no one knows who the woman really is, but she’s called a Sabine. Drawing copies like this was how young artists trained before they invented their own figures. To see how David turned these studies into paintings, look up *Jacques-Louis David (French, 1748–1825)*.
![Statue of Abundance [recto]](https://pub-3a17a9933ad74fb28aa30fa758592f23.r2.dev/artworks/af10c767ab97b269/thumb.webp)
