First picture: The Intervention of the Sabine Women, by Jacques-Louis David (1799), from Musée du Louvre.

The painter shows the Sabine women intervening to stop the battle raging in Rome. The woman in center Hersilia is leaping between her father Tatius, the king of the Sabines, on the left, and her husband Romulus, the king of Rome, on the right. David began thinking about painting this subject during his incarceration shortly after the French revolution.

Second picture: Woman Protecting the Anti-Riot Police from Fellow Demonstrators, Tehran-Iran, (December 2009), from Tehran24.