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| Year | c. 220-190 BC |
|---|---|
| Type | Parian marble |
| Height | 328 cm |
| Location | Louvre, Paris |
The Winged Victory of Samothrace, also called the Nike of Samothrace,[1] is a third century B.C. 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.
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Description
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[2] originally formed part of the Samothrace temple complex dedicated to the Great Gods, Megalon Theon. 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,[3] cupped round her mouth to deliver the shout of Victory.[4] The work is notable for its naturalistic pose and for the rendering of the figure's draped garments, depicted as if rippling in a strong sea breeze, which is considered especially compelling.
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,[5] 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 "Rhodhios" (Rhodes), indicating that the statue was commissioned to celebrate a naval victory by Rhodes, at that time the most powerful maritime state in the Aegean.[6]
History
The product of an unknown sculptor, presumably of Rhodian origin, the Victory is believed to date to between 220 and 190 BC. When first discovered on the island of Samothrace (in Greek, Σαμοθρακη — Samothraki) and published in 1863 it was suggested that the Victory was erected by the Macedonian general Demetrius I Poliorcetes after his naval victory at Cyprus between 295 and 289 BC. The Samothrace Archaeological Museum continues to follow these originally established provenance and dates.[7] Ceramic evidence discovered in recent excavations has revealed that the pedestal was set up about 200 BC, though some scholars still date it as early as 250 BC or as late as 180.[8] Certainly, the parallels with figures and drapery from the Pergamon Altar (dated about 170 BC) seem strong. However, the evidence for a Rhodian commission of the statue has been questioned, and the closest artistic parallel to the Nike of Samothrace are figures depicted on Macedonian coins [9]. Samothrace was an important sanctuary for the hellenistic Macedonian kings. The most likely battle commemorated by this monument is, perhaps, the battle of Kos in 255 BC, in which Antigonus II Gonatas of Macedonia won over the fleet of Ptolemy II of Egypt [10].
In April 1863, the Victory was discovered by the French consul and amateur archaeologist Charles Champoiseau, who sent it to Paris in the same year. The statue has been reassembled in stages since its discovery. The prow was reconstructed from marble debris at the site by Champoiseau in 1879 and assembled in situ before being shipped to Paris. Since 1884 it has dominated the Daru staircase.[11] displayed in the Louvre, while a plaster replica stands in the museum at the original location of the Sanctuary of the Great Gods on Samothrace. The discovery in 1948 of the hand raised in salute, which matched a fragment in Vienna, established the modern reconstruction — without trumpet — of the hand raised in epiphanic greeting.
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. The statue shows a mastery of form and movement which has impressed critics and artists since its discovery. It is particularly admired for its naturalism and for the fine rendering of the draped garments. It is considered one of the Louvre's greatest treasures, and it is today displayed in the most dramatic fashion, at the head of the sweeping Daru staircase. The loss of the head and arms, while regrettable in a sense, is held by many to enhance the statue's depiction of the supernatural.
The Victory soon became a cultural icon to which artists responded in many different ways. For example, Abbott Handerson Thayer's A Virgin (1892-93) is a well-known painted allusion. When Filippo Tommaso Marinetti issued his Futurist Manifesto in 1909, he chose to contrast his movement with the supposedly defunct artistic sentiments of the Winged Victory: "... a race-automobile which seems to rush over exploding powder is more beautiful than the 'Victory of Samothrace'."
The 1913 sculpture Unique Forms of Continuity in Space by the Futuristic sculptor Umberto Boccioni, currently located at MoMA, was highly influenced by the statue and bears an underlying resemblance to Nike of Samothrace.[12]
Numerous copies exist in museums and galleries around the world; one of the best-known copies stands outside the Caesars Palace casino in Las Vegas. The Rolls-Royce radiator figurine, Spirit of Ecstasy, was also based on the Nike of Samothrace.[1] The first FIFA World Cup trophy, commissioned in 1930, designed by Abel Lafleur was based on the model.
This statue was a favorite of Frank Lloyd Wright and he used reproductions of it in a number of his buildings, including Ward Willits House, Darwin D. Martin House and Storer House. It also features in the novel Seven Ancient Wonders, where it is fictionally made part of the Statue of Zeus at Olympia.
Notes
- ^ In Greek the statue is called the Niki tis Samothrakis (Νίκη της Σαμοθράκης) and in French La Victoire de Samothrace. There are two further statues of Winged Victory found in the Samothrace temple complex: a Roman copy found by a team of Austrian archaeologists, now at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, and a third Winged Victory found by Dr. Phyllis Williams Lehmann in 1949, now in a museum at the Samothrace site.
- ^ Its height: 3.28 m / 10.7 ft, including the wings).
- ^ The flex of her torso reveals the movement of her missing arm.
- ^ Louvre website; the discovery of her right hand, identified by Phyllis Williams Lehmann, now also at the Louvre, settled questions of her gesture, whether to bring a trumpet to her lips as she is depicted on contemporary coins or bearing a wreath to crown the naval victor.
- ^ New York Times, obituary of Phyllis Williams Lehmann, 16 October 2004
- ^ This in itself would date the statue to 288 BC at the earliest.
- ^ Hatzfeld pointed out in 1910 that Samothrace was in the possession of Demetrios' bitter personal enemy Lysimachus, who would not have permitted the erection of such a monument.
- ^ Haskell and Penny 1981:333.
- ^ Smith, 1991. Hellenistic Sculpture (World of Art).
- ^ Burn, 2005. Hellenistic Art: From Alexander the Great to Augustus.
- ^ The monumental Escalier Daru designed by Hector Lefuel to replace the former staircase of the Musée Napoléon was constructed from 1855 to 1857 in the Pavillon Daru, named for a minister of Napoleon III. At the fall of the Second Empire it remained incomplete; it was finished in 1883 as a setting for the Victory of Samothrace (Louvre website).
- ^ http://www.moma.org/collection/printable_view.php?object_id=81179
References
- Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny, 1981. Taste and the Antique; the Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500-1900 (Yale University Press) Catalogue number 92.
The second largest replica of this statue in the United States resides at Calvary Cemetery in Pittsburgh, PA. The statue stands at 8'1".
External links
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Nike of Samothrace |
- Detailed description about the Victory of Samothrace on the Louvre website
- Interactive multimedia feature on the Louvre website
- The Louvre website on the Escalier Daru
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