How old is winged victory

Sculpture of Samothrace in the Louvre, image sourced from Louvre official website. The Greeks had a taste for sculpted, wet-looking, wind-blown draperies at the time, and the Victory of Samothrace remains by far the greatest example we still get to marvel at. As such, it left a mark on popular culture. Planning a trip to Paris? Get ready! We sometimes read this list just to find out what new travel products people are buying. Now that you know more, enjoy marveling at the Winged Victory of Samothrace in person during your next visit of the Louvre you can reserve skip-the-line tickets now.

To support our blog and writers we put affiliate links and advertising on our page. Read more. Facebook Instagram Search. Discover Walks Blog. The National Endowment for the Humanities. Winged Victory of Samothrace. Twitter Facebook. Photo caption. Their position has been recreated thanks to the shape of the surface where they would have been placed. The Victory was not striding forward, but rather alighting on the ship, barely skimming the base.

This drawing suggests what the original statue might have looked like. Benndorf and K. Right hand Parian marble L. The base in the form of a ship Click on the arrow to launch the audio. The Hellenistic period saw numerous naval battles between the kingdoms inherited by the successors of Alexander the Great as they fought for control of the Aegean Sea. Battle fleets were thus a vital military resource. The base of the Victory of Samothrace depicts the prow of a battleship typical of a time which saw many new developments in naval architecture.

They were used to bear the weight of several tiers of longer, more powerful oars. The oar boxes on the base of the statue are particularly well preserved. On the outer side, you can even make out the oval openings used as oar slots , forming two unaligned rows. But the most important weapon on a Greek battleship was its great ram , attached to the waterline , along with a smaller ram higher on the stem.

The rams from the Samothrace base have been lost entirely. They would have been carved in stone, like those on the base of the naval monument in the agora of Cyrene in Libya. A bronze ram measuring 2. The prow ornament, placed at the extremity of the stem at the front of the ship, is likewise missing from the Victory of Samothrace, but coins and bas relief carvings from the period suggest what it might have looked like.

This is what the base of the Victory must originally have looked like. The diagram shows the keel, the large ram extending from the main wale, the smaller ram extending from the stem at the level of the upper wale, the oar boxes with the oar slots , the gunwale, the prow ornament, and the fighting deck. Relief: battleship 3rd-2nd century BC Marble H. Naval monument circa BC? The structure of the monument Click on the arrow to launch the audio. The statue of the Victory of Samothrace consists of several blocks of marble, carved separately and then assembled.

This technique, used by Greek sculptors for the head and other protruding parts of the statue as early as the Archaic period , began to be used for the body itself in the Hellenistic period. The statue thus consists of one large block from beneath the breasts to the feet, topped by a smaller block for the upper torso and head.

The arms, wings, feet, and several pieces of the drapery were carved separately before the work as a whole was assembled. The wings, carved from two large marble slabs and attached to the back of the statue with no external support the reinforcements are modern , created a tricky problem of balance. The sculptor solved the problem by carving the outer face of each wing in one tier and slotting them into a sort of console decorated with feathers sculpted at the back of the main block forming the body.

Moreover, a slight downward slope in the horizontal surface on which the wings rested meant that their weight was borne by the body, so that two metal dowels were all it took to hold them in place. This remarkably ingenious solution meant that the sculptor was able to use cantilevering in a large marble work, although the technique was normally only possible in bronze.

The base, made of 23 blocks of marble, demonstrates the same astonishing mastery of the laws of physics. On a rectangular base consisting of six adjoining slabs stand seventeen blocks, originally held together with metal pins, forming three horizontal courses , rising slightly towards the front. The course of the oar boxes at the back consists of two adjacent blocks, the deck of three. The gap at the back of the top level was not part of the original work.

It housed a large block weighing slightly over two metric tons, left in Samothrace, with a cavity into which the statue was slotted. When the block was in place, it acted as a counterbalance for the oar boxes extending from the sides of the ship. As can be seen, only a small part at the back of the long block forming the forepart of the keel rests on the pedestal, yet it remains stable and even bears the weight of the upper blocks.

How is this possible? The statue, made of marble from Paros one of the finest marbles of Greece , represents the goddess of Victory about to alight on a ship whose sailors have just won a sea battle. It probably dates to BC and was commissioned to celebrate that victory.

The winners, perhaps the inhabitants of the island of Rhodes, erected it in Samothrace to thank the Great Gods of the island, the Cabeiri, who were worshipped throughout the Greek world.

After several digs, only the right hand turned up: first the thumb and part of the ring finger by an Austrian team in , then the palm and the remainder of the ring finger by the archaeologist Jean Charbonneaux in These remains are in a small showcase on the landing. The cm hand turns its palm upward, in a sign of victory. Venus de Milo and the Galerie des Antiques. Explore The palace A stairway to Victory Aller au contenu Health pass In accordance with government recommendations, all visitors to the Louvre aged 12 years and two months or older must show a Health Pass.

A stairway to Victory The Daru staircase. The goddess of Victory She seems to float through the air! A monumental staircase The Daru staircase is the perfect setting for this extraordinary display. Did you know?