The Winged Victory of Samothrace

Femme ailee sure une proue de navire,
dite Victoire de Samothrace, vers 190 av J.C
Marbre / 328 cm

unused, from 2010

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The Winged Victory of Samothrace, also called the Nike of Samothrace, is a second 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.

Winged Victory was discovered in 1863, but was estimated to have been created around 190 BC. It is rendered in white Parian marble.

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 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.