Winged Victory of Samothrace

The goddess Nike alights on the prow of a warship, wings still spread, sea wind pressing her drapery into deep translucent folds against her striding body. Carved in Parian marble around 190 BC, probably to commemorate a naval victory, and unearthed on Samothrace in 1863, it is one of the few great Hellenistic originals to survive rather than a Roman copy. Displayed since 1884 at the head of the Louvre's Daru staircase, the headless figure has become the museum's second emblem after the Mona Lisa, and the very image of victory.