The dynamic painting of the Neapolitan Luca Giordano fascinated the Genoese, who collected several of his paintings. This canvas was owned by the noble Costantino Balbi, from whose collections many works arrived at Palazzo Spinola by inheritance. Only in recent years has the canvas, not included in these hereditary passages, been bought by the museum. It represents an episode of the legend of Rome: the city had just been founded and King Romulus decided to populate it by kidnapping the women of a rival people, the Sabines.