Winged Victory of Samothrace

What you are looking at

A winged woman has just alighted on the prow of a ship. Her body pushes forward into the wind; her right leg steps out, her left trails behind, and her great wings sweep back and up. A thin, wet-looking dress clings to her stomach and breasts and whips in deep folds between her legs, while a heavier mantle slips from her hips and streams out behind. Her head and arms are gone, but the motion is so complete that most viewers barely notice.

Walk around her. From the front she rises in a single upward thrust. From the side, the diagonal of her body against the wings makes her look as if she is still landing. The sculptor has carved the drapery in two weights: fine, rippling folds where the wind presses the cloth to the body, and deep, shadowy troughs where it billows free. It is one of the great studies of wind in stone.

Who is she?

She is Nike, the personification of victory in Greek religion, often shown descending from the sky to crown the winner of a battle or contest. Her right arm was probably raised, perhaps to crown or salute; fragments of her right hand, found later, are displayed near the statue. The ship beneath her, carved separately in gray marble, is a warship's prow, which ties the monument to a naval victory.

Where was the Winged Victory of Samothrace found?

In 1863 Charles Champoiseau, the French vice-consul at Adrianople, excavated on the island of Samothrace in the northern Aegean, at the Sanctuary of the Great Gods, a site of mystery cults. He found the torso and many fragments of the figure and sent them to Paris. The gray marble blocks of the ship were identified and shipped later, in the 1870s and 1880s, after Austrian archaeologists explored the site. Excavations established that the statue stood in a niche on a hillside above the sanctuary's theater, probably in a basin of water, so that the ship seemed to float.

Who made it, and when?

The sculptor is unknown. The figure is carved in white marble from the island of Paros, and the ship from a gray marble quarried at Lartos on Rhodes. That Rhodian connection has led many scholars to link the monument to a naval victory of Rhodes in the early second century BC, which would date it around 200–190 BC. An earlier theory connected it to Demetrius Poliorcetes, a Macedonian king whose coins show a Nike on a prow, but most scholars now prefer the later date. The bold movement and theatrical drapery fit the Hellenistic period, the age after Alexander the Great, when Greek sculpture turned toward drama and emotion, as in Laocoön and His Sons.

What does it mean?

As a monument, it was a thank-offering: a victorious city or commander dedicating an image of divine victory at a sanctuary famous among sailors. As a sculpture, it fixes a moment of arrival, the instant when victory descends. Since its rediscovery it has come to stand for triumph itself, and for the beauty of the incomplete; its missing head makes it impersonal, a force rather than a woman.

Reception and legacy

The statue was reassembled in Paris and installed at the head of the Louvre's Daru staircase in the 1880s, where it has stood almost continuously since (it was evacuated during the Second World War). The Futurist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti famously declared in 1909 that a roaring racing car was more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace, which only confirmed its status. Casts stand in museums and on campuses worldwide, its silhouette echoes through trophies and emblems, and it is central to Greek statues and famous sculptures in any account. In the Louvre, compare it with the calm of the Venus de Milo.

Details most viewers miss

• The back. The right side and back of the figure are less finished than the front and left. The sculptor knew how the statue would be seen in its niche and saved effort where no one would look.
• The right hand. A hand with open fingers, found on Samothrace in 1950, is displayed in a case near the statue. It probably belonged to the Victory, raised in greeting rather than holding a crown.
• The two marbles. The white figure and the gray ship came from different islands, so color itself separates the goddess from the human vessel she lands on.

Where to see the Winged Victory of Samothrace

She stands at the top of the Daru staircase in the Denon wing of the Musée du Louvre in Paris, lit from above and seen from below as you climb, which is the best way to approach her. A restoration completed in 2014 cleaned the marble and reassembled the ship with its missing pieces.