Luca Giordano revelled in the opportunity to paint large, dramatic compositions that allowed full play to his powers of swift and vigorous execution. 'Fa Presto' (quickly does it) was his nickname. The story of 'The Rape of the Sabines' is taken from accounts of the building of Rome by the historians Livy and Plutarch. Romulus, the city's founder, was anxious to establish a secure basis for the city's future population. He therefore arranged a festival and invited all the inhabitants of neighbouring settlements. At a given signal during the celebrations the young men of Rome broke into the crowd and, choosing only the unmarried Sabine women, bore them off to be their wives. Giordano suceeded his master Ribera as the most significant artist of the Neapolitan school of the High Baroque in the second half of the seventeenth century.