Nike of Samothrace with the prow pedestal

myminifactory

This is a model of the Winged Victory (Nike of Samothrace) with her prow pedestal.  The statue of Nike was integral to counter-balancing the unsupported outward thrust of the prow. Without her, the prow would collapse. Thus, the entire monument is an engineering feat coupled with artistic mastery. The monument depicts the moment that Nike, the goddess of victory, alights on the prow. Her right foot has just landed on the toes while the rest of her is still airborne. The drapery swirling behind her disguised the bulk of the figure resting on the central block inside the prow.  Her right hand was raised in a gesture of greeting. What her left arm and hand were doing is unknown as nothing of the left shoulder survived. What we see today is a reconstruction based on the best guess of restorers from the 19th century. The reconstruction was necessary to attach the left wing.  The right wing is a mirror copy of the left as little of it survived.  The head was never found. In the most recent restoration, the entire monument was taken apart. It was completely scanned and documented in depth for the first time. Everything was carefully cleaned. The statue was thoroughly examined, scanned and cleaned. The overall appearance of the monument changed from a mustard brown color to the material colors of grey Rhodian marble for the prow and Paros white marble for the statue. Some small fragments that had been in storage were finally found to fit in areas and attached. The left wing gained an extra feather. The grey prow was reassembled, then had scanned copies of fragments remaining in Samothrace added. For the large gaps between the blocks a filler was added to harmonize everything so it would look more complete. A closer inspection reveals the infill that were added as they were given a slightly different coloration from the original material. A new pedestal was built and the entire monument was reconstructed atop it to protect it from visitors leaning and sitting on it.  The goddess was set back on the deck of the prow as she would have originally been erected. Before the restoration a concrete block had been set inside the prow to raise her up to make her more visible, but at a cost to the intended composition. Today the Nike of Samothrace and the prow she stands on is once again one of the highlights of the Louvre and looks better than she ever did since the first days she was set on display. I used the existing Winged Victory model from here at Scan the World and scaled it before adding it to the prow model. I created the prow model from a series of still photos taken from a video I found on YouTube. The resolution of the prow model is low as the video wasn't of a sufficiently high enough resolution to resolve the finer details. I had to smooth it out to make it look better while trying to keep the overall larger details and the lines of some of the largest blocks.