Right Hand of the Winged Victory of Samothrace
Unknown · c. 190-180 BC
In a case on the landing, beside the great winged goddess, lies a marble hand: the palm, the thumb and the ring finger of the right hand of the Victory herself, twenty-eight centimetres long. It is open, fingers spread, and shows that the goddess held nothing; she was raising her hand in a gesture of greeting or triumph. The marble is from Paros, like the figure, and the surface still carries the traces of the sculptor's tools. The fingers and the last joint of the ring finger have been reattached, and a chip at the joint is filled in plaster.
The statue was found on the island of Samothrace in 1863, but the hand came to light much later: the palm was uncovered in 1950 by the American excavations at the sanctuary, and the thumb and ring finger, found by Austrian archaeologists in 1875 and kept in Vienna, were recognised as belonging to it and joined to the palm. The pieces arrived in the Louvre in 1950 and 1954 as deposits. Dated to the years around one hundred and ninety before Christ and probably carved in Rhodes, it is the only part of the goddess's missing arms ever recovered.
Did You Know? The open palm proved that the goddess held nothing, ending a century of guesses about a trumpet or a crown.
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