Victory of Samothrace replica

The Winged Victory of Samothrace, discovered in 1863 on the small Aegean island of the same name and now mounted at the top of the Daru staircase in the Louvre, was carved around 200 BCE to commemorate a naval victory of the Rhodian fleet. Nike alights on the prow of a marble ship, her wings spread against an imagined wind, her drapery pressed against her body by the salt spray. No surviving Hellenistic sculpture better captures the moment of arrival — the goddess in the act of touching down upon the deck.