The Winged Victory of Samothrace,
also called the Nike of Samothrace, is a 2nd
century BC marble sculpture of the Greek goddess Nike (Victory).
Since 1884, it has been prominently displayed at the Louvre and is one of the most celebrated sculptures in the world.
Description
The Nike of Samothrace, discovered in 1863, is
estimated to have been created around 190 BC. It was created to not only
honor the goddess, Nike, but to honor a sea battle. It conveys a sense of
action and triumph as well as portraying artful flowing drapery through its
features which the Greeks considered ideal beauty.
Modern excavations suggest that the Victory occupied a niche in an open-air
theater and also suggest it accompanied an altar that was within view of the
ship monument of Demetrius I Poliorcetes (337–283
BC). Rendered in white Parian
marble, the figure originally formed part of the Samothrace temple complex dedicated to the Great gods, Megaloi Theoi. It stood on a rostral
pedestal of gray marble from Lartos representing the prow of a ship (most likely a trihemiolia), and represents the
goddess as she descends from the skies to the triumphant fleet. Before she lost
her arms, which have never been recovered, Nike's right arm was raised, cupped round her mouth to deliver the
shout of Victory. The work is notable for its convincing rendering of a pose
where violent motion and sudden stillness meet, for its graceful balance and
for the rendering of the figure's draped garments, compellingly depicted as if
rippling in a strong sea breeze. Similar traits can be seen in the Laocoön groupwhich is a reworked copy
of a lost original that was likely close both in time and place of origin to
Nike, but while Laocoon, vastly admired by Renaissance and classicist artists, has come to be
seen as a more self-conscious and
contrived work, Nike of Samothrace is seen as an iconic depiction of
triumphant spirit and of the divine momentarily coming face to face with man.
It is possible, however, that the power of the work is enhanced by the very
fact that the head is missing.
The statue’s outstretched right wing is a symmetric plaster version of
the original left one. As with the arms, the figure's head has never been
found, but various other fragments have since been found: in 1950, a team led
by Karl Lehmann unearthed the missing right hand of the Louvre's Winged
Victory. The fingerless hand had slid out of sight under a large rock, near
where the statue had originally stood; on the return trip home, Dr Phyllis Williams Lehmann identified the tip of the Goddess's
ring finger and her thumb in a storage drawer at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna,
where the second Winged Victory is displayed; the fragments have been reunited
with the hand, which is now in a
glass case in the Louvre next to the podium on which the statue
stands.
The statue now stands over a supplementary platform over the prow that
allows a better contemplation but was not present in the original. The
different degree of finishing of the sides has led scholars to think that it
was intended to be seen from three-quarters on the left.
A partial inscription on the base of the statue includes the word
"Rhodios" (Rhodian), indicating that the statue was commissioned to
celebrate a naval victory by Rhodes,
at that time the most powerful maritime state in the Aegean.
Assessment, Reception and influence
Despite its significant damage and incompleteness, the Victory is held to be one of the great
surviving masterpieces of sculpture from the Hellenistic period, and from the entire Greco
Roman era. The statue shows a mastery of form and movement which has impressed
critics and artists since its discovery. It is considered one of the Louvre's
greatest treasures, and since the late 19th century it has been displayed in
the most dramatic fashion, at the head of the sweeping Daru staircase. The loss
of the head, while regrettable in a sense, is held by many to enhance the statue's
depiction of the supernatural.
The art historian H.W. Janson has pointed out that unlike earlier Greek or Near
Eastern sculptures, Nike creates a deliberate relationship to
the imaginary space around the goddess. The wind that has carried her and which
she is fighting off, straining to keep steady – as mentioned the original
mounting had her standing on a ship's prow, just having landed – is the
invisible complement of the figure and the viewer is made to imagine it. At the
same time, this expanded space heightens the symbolic force of the work; the
wind and the sea are suggested as metaphors of struggle, destiny and divine
help or grace. This kind of interplay between a statue and the space conjured
up would become a common device in baroque and romantic art, about two thousand
years later. It is present in Bernini's
sculpture of David: David's gaze and pose shows
where he is seeing his adversary Goliath and his awareness of the moment – but
it is rare in ancient art.
On August 27th, 1999, the artist Max Mulhern delivered
a new Nike sculpture to the island of Samothraki as a gift to replace the
missing original. The new sculpture was made of aluminium and had only one wing
and one breast. This was a reference to the fact that the original was missing
a wing and a breast when it arrived in Paris (See La Revue De Famille, “La
“Victoire" de Samothrace” by Ant. Héron de Villefosse, 1872 issue number
4, pgs. 516 to 533. These were recreated by the Louvre before the sculpture was
displayed to the public). The new Nike was welcomed by the citizens of the
island. However the Greek Ministry of Culture refused access of the new
sculpture to the site where the original Nike was discovered. The gift was
buried in a field by the sea.
