#The Nike of Samothrace statue

[gyossefka]

Nike of Samothrace

[canopiancatboy]

I've been sick and really out of it, and felt possessed to print out some classic statues. I asked my partner for one to start with, and they chose Winged Victory of Samothrace

I love that museums and independent organizations just go around using high quality scanners to help make history more accessible, even in small ways like this. I'll likely never visit the Louvre, or Greece if they ever get it back, but I can print my own

[yourfriendlypyrovampire]

Why does the sculpture Rafayel's "restoring" in Ivory Nightfall looks like The Nike of Samothrace statue/Winged Victory sculpture? Yes, I'm obsessed with it and hope to see it in person one day. No, it's not because I found out that my name is the Spanish form of Victoria.

(Which brings up kind of a funny stor(ies) depending on how you look at it. Whenever they ask me for my name at drive-thru intercoms, they mishear my name as Victoria. Since allegedly my name is a different form of Victoria, I just roll with it🤷🏾‍♀️. I even remember as a kid some folks called me Tori instead of Toya🤔)

[artschoolglasses]

Winged Victory in the Louvre

Paris, France

[hazelhymns]

frank lloyd wright’s martin house, 1/4/24

[apostisamess]

[lifeisbetterinmydreams]

i will never beat the accidental poetry of comparing the winged victory of samothrace (the nike statue) and the lament of icurus in my comparative study and being able to say the main difference is one is about victory and the other is about failure

[exhaustthebones]

Winged Victory of Samothrace, from the Louvre

[toast-koast]

[marlowe-art]

nike of samothrace // nike of paionios

the other day i went to paint a statue with some friends & it went poorly for me & now i am determined to get the hang of painting statues to make up for that experience

[quitefair]

The Temple of Mythal and Greek Sculpture

Or: How Bioware takes from history without any nuance.

--

Picture this. You're me, playing Inquisition for the first time. You get to the Temple of Mythal, the doors shut behind you and you finally get to look around. It's a typical elven ruin for the game, nothing much seems different...

Hold on.

Hold the fuck on.

You know what that is.

You know what that's based on, and for a long time after it tickles you. Oh, maybe that meant something in the grander scheme of things! We've never seen such a blatant reference to a real-life sculpture anywhere else in game (to my knowledge at the time)! Maybe it'll come up later and it'll all make sense!

Here's the deal. I've been bothered by this for years. The more I think about it, the more angry I become. Anger over a single fucking type of statue, you say? There's a lot of other shit to be angry over in this game, and you choose this?

YES! I CHOOSE THIS! AND THIS IS WHY.

--

Picture this. You're me again, aged 14 this time. You're in the Louvre, the first museum of Western classical art you've ever been to. You've grown up in a place where this interest could only be cultivated from extra-curricular reading, and for a kid that age from my country to be ass deep in Greek and Egyptian myth is frankly lmao. Neurodivergent. Anyway.

So we're wandering around the Louvre, I've just taken my parents through the Egyptian section and given them a thorough infodump on everything I know about burial rites.

And then we enter this room. And I very nearly fall to my knees when I catch sight of her.

This is the sculpture the statues at the Temple of Mythal are based on - one Winged Victory of Samothrace.

She is a sculpture from the Hellenestic era, depicting the goddess Nike stood at the prow of a ship. Her head and both arms are missing, save one hand with two fingers (also in the Louvre but displayed separately). She was found on the Greek island of Samothrace, among the ruins of what was known as the Sanctuary of the Great Gods. It seemed like she was displayed at the top of a hill, looming down at all that regarded her.

I’ve had the absolute privilege of seeing her in person twice in my life, both before and after the 2013 restoration. And let me tell you, regardless of which staircase that leads you there, the sight of her will stop you in your tracks.

[Now with people, for scale.]

She is massive. Larger than life, and immediately is the centre of your attention. It's not the fact that she has no head, no arms. No, you will realise the closer you get to her, the more you're able to appreciate the details of this absolutely astounding piece of history.

No. It's because she feels so alive.

The way her robes drape against flesh, wet from sea-spray or rain, yet flowing with the motion of an invisible wind. The wings cast behind her dramatically as her right foot steps forward. Standing tall and proud, unflinching, unbowed against the elements. Even without her arms, you can feel how dynamic the torso and legs are.

You don't need to be an art historian, or even have any knowledge of Greek myth or art history to stand in front of her, as I once did as a young teen, and nearly be brought to tears.

So.

This brings me to the first of the two main gripes I have with the way this sculpture is used in Inquisition.

Compared to the way she's displayed in the Louvre, and also presumably how she was presented to her original audience - larger than life, looming, powerful, beautiful - she is relegated instead to smaller, repeating statues of the same nature throughout the temple.

This diminishes the purpose of the original sculpture, which was to instill a sense of awe and wonder. The singularity that forces you to focus and appreciate the scale and intricacy. The aura, the gravitas of having a single, massive sculpture of such a dynamic figure is completely gone.

And to make things worse, they Mythal-ify her. Adding a helmed head and changing her beautiful feathered wings to leathery dragon wings. They don't even add arms, which is odd because the original sculpture very clearly is missing its arms.

And, may I ask, Why?

It feels cheap, like they saw the Winged Victory and were like 'oh shit this is a cool sculpture, we should add it in game' without giving any fucking thought to what the sculpture means.

Which brings me to the second gripe. The complete disregard for the symbolism of the Winged Victory.

Detail from the Athena fountain, Parliament Building of Vienna, showing Nike the Winged Victory in the palm of Athena's hand [source]

Nike is a minor Greek deity, said to be the daughter of Pallas (a Titan) and the river Styx. Her other siblings by the same parents include Zelus (Zeal),  Bia (Might) and Kratos (Strength).

Yes. That Kratos.

She was one of the earliest gods to pledge her allegiance to Zeus in the Titonomachy, and after the victory of the Olympians, Nike and the other gods that allied with them were allowed to live on Olympus. In her aspect as Victory, she is closely associated with several of the major Greek gods, and in particular, Athena.

There's also her Roman counterpart, Victoria. This version doesn't come with the backstory Nike has, but is more of a general concept of victory. This is the aspect that is present in a lot of the modern sculptures and interpretations of Nike/Victoria:

Left: Detail from the Berlin Victory Column. Right: Detail from the Victoria Memorial, London. Note the similar iconography, of a woman seemingly standing against a strong wind, fabric and cloth adhering and yet flowing against the breeze, wings outstretched.

From this, we can probably extrapolate what our beloved Winged Victory might've looked like. Here's an artist's render of one possibility:

There's some iconography we need to go through before moving on - symbols that are commonly associated with Nike/Victoria.

One is the trumpet as see in the reconstruction above, the sound and symbol of the end of war, of impending peace. Another is the laurel wreath, another Greek symbol of victory and achievement. Famously, laurel wreaths were used to crown victors of the original Olympic games.

This is another conversation entirely, but there’s a discussion to be had about the duality of Elgar’nan and Mythal, in term of vengeance and justice, and how an emotional rage versus a calculated wisdom can be compared to the difference between the two Greek gods of war – Ares and Athena.

If we can compare Mythal to Athena, in the sense of her wisdom in making difficult decisions, then it’s not a stretch to associate Mythal with the symbolism of Nike, and therefore explain the presence of statues similar to the Winged Victory in her temple.

But since Bioware absolutely did not put this in the game for anything other than the Aesthetic, there’s some problems that need to be addressed.

Mainly in the way in which these statues are scattered throughout the temple. If you wanted static, ominous statues to line the walls as your player characters explore, perhaps have like, I dunno. Less dynamic statues that you reference?

Left: Nike of Paionos, Right: Stele 1 of Las Incantadas

Or maybe instead of statues, have friezes lining the walls. Like this one from the equally iconic Pergamon altar, depicting the Giganomanchy.

It’s the same symbolism, the wings, the smiting of foes and victory of good over evil.

And then perhaps, at the heart of the temple... where, y'know Bioware, lay a body of water sacred to Mythal herself, you could've perhaps done something remarkable. You could then have had the most dramatic and beautiful entrance you’d ever seen.

[Nike, at the iconic Daru Staircase, the Louvre]

It was at this moment that Mythal walked out of the sea of the earth's tears and onto the land. She placed her hand on Elgar'nan's brow, and at her touch he grew calm and knew that his anger had led him astray. - Codex entry: Mythal: The Great Protector

Mythal herself strides out of the Well Of Sorrows, the metaphorical tears of her followers that died and kept their knowledge alive in her name. Her (draconic) wings spread out, (restored) hands outstretched to touch her husband, to calm the rage that nearly destroyed this world.

A symbol of victory against the blind rage of a god against His father, the Sun. A symbol of wisdom and grace, against the violence of hatred. A divine sense of something bigger than anything we could imagine.

There's also the lack of iconography regarding victory, instead piling on some cheap representations of what we think of as Mythal. That's another post entirely on the symbolism of the Elven gods, but if Bioware really wanted to hone in on the Athena/Athena Nike parallels, they might have thrown in the trumpet/laurel/palm leaf symbolism with the statues, alongside the dragon wings.

If this were the case, then maybe, just maybe, Inquisition would’ve then earned the use of this sculpture in the game.

Sources not listed above/Further reading if you're interested

https://www.louvre.fr/en/explore/the-palace/a-stairway-to-victory

https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1412/winged-victory-the-nike-of-samothrace/https://smarthistory.org/nike-winged-victory-of-samothrace/

https://smarthistory.org/nike-winged-victory-of-samothrace/

https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/ancient-art-civilizations/greek-art/hellenistic/a/nike-winged-victory-of-samothrace

[art-that-fucks-you-up-tournament]

SET FIVE - ROUND ONE - MATCH THREE

"Laocoön and His Sons" (c.27 BCE-68 CE - attributed to Agesander, Athenodoros, and Polydorus) / "Winged Victory of Samothrace" (c. 200-190 BCE)

LAOCOÖN AND HIS SONS: when i think of ancient greek marble sculpture i usually think of laocoon or artemis of ephesus (those aren't boobs they're beads! er that's offtopic) or the elgin marbles (let's not talk about those.). and of THOSE it's laocoon that fucks me up. look at them. they're in AGONY. that's MARBLE. and the snakes are amazing and the hair and ugh. and the unfairness of punishing both the sons for something they didn't do is also heartrending. learn to assign blame correctly!! (@kaerran)

WINGED VICTORY OF SAMOTHRACE: the drapery and wings feel like they are totally weightless. indomitable. (@universallygladiatornacho )

("Laocoön and His Sons" is a marble sculpture attributed to Agesander, Athenodoros, and Polydorus. It measures 208 cm × 163 cm × 112 cm (6 ft 10 in × 5 ft 4 in × 3 ft 8 in) and is located in the Vatican Museums.

"Winged Victory of Samothrace" or The Winged Nike is a sculpture made of parian marble. The sculpture is 5.57m (18.3 ft) tall, including the boat shaped base, and the statue only is 2.75m (9 ft). It was originally found in Samothrace, Greece, but is currently held in the Louvre in Paris.)

[pmamtraveller]

WINGED VICTORY OF SAMOTHRACE (NIKE OF SAMOTHRACE) b. 200-175 BCE

This is a masterpiece of GREEK sculpture from the HELLENISTIC era. It is a colossal statue representing the goddess NIKE (VICTORY), composed of a white marble statue and a grey marble ship's bow base

The sculpture depicts NIKE alighting on the ship's bow, with her wings dramatically outstretched behind her and her drapery billowing in the wind. This dynamic composition conveys a vivid sense of movement and energy, as if the goddess has just descended from the heavens to announce a naval victory.

The sculptor's technical mastery is evident in the construction of NIKE'S wings, which were carved from marble and inserted into slots on her back. This innovative approach allowed the creation of large, unsupported wings without the need for external support, a rare feat in ancient GREEK sculpture.

Stylistically, the NIKE of SAMOTHRACE exemplifies the HELLENISTIC aesthetic, with its dramatic, emotive pose and the eroticized rendering of NIKE'S body beneath the sheer drapery. The statue was intended to be viewed from multiple angles, encouraging the viewer to physically engage with the artwork

Regardless of the specific historical context, THE WINGED VICTORY OF SAMOTHRACE stands as a masterpiece of HELLENISTIC sculpture, celebrated for its technical virtuosity, dynamic composition, and emotive power.

[artschoolglasses]

Winged Victory at the Louvre

Paris, France

[freesidexjunkie]

I am however again drooling over the statues of Mythal being based off of the Nike of Samothrace. For classics nerd reasons.

[argetcross]

Saw my favorite statue (the Nike of Samothrace) again after ten years!