Winged Nike of Samothrace

Now in the Louvre, this astonishing sculpture once graced a larger monument to a great naval battle won by the Athenian navy, around the year 200 B.C. This battered, wonderful figure, embodies the Greek passion for beauty, martial strength and imaginative transformation in the addition of wings as though they are the most natural things in the world for a woman to have. Few cultures appreciate the innate sensuality of the human form as did the pre-Roman Greeks. This is one of the great surviving works from antiquity. I have sketched the real thing while in Paris and the sweep and sexual dynamism of this striding form, with its powerful flapping wings is essentially unmatched in the history of art. If you know of a more compelling Greek or Roman scultpure, please contact me at:

johnsheridanart@sbcglobal.net

(See references to Greek art in Harry Roche's interview. 1, 2)