Abduction Scene

Many of the bronzes Giambologna made for export, such as the Abduction Scene, were useful in diplomatic exchange because they took up a mythological repertory shared across Europe. The repetitiveness of Giambologna’s small bronze production, the creation and dispersion of multiples or of closely related figures with only slight variations, inherently worked against the idea that inventions reflected the places for which they were made. This made it possible to ship those works to different centres or to place them in different settings, as a collector wished.