Winged Victory of Samothrace, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
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Do you ever think about the head of the Winged Victory of Samothrace? I do. I think about it all the time.
Somebody thought it into being over 22 centuries ago. Somebody commissioned it, probably to celebrate a naval victory, and I wonder if they described what it should look like - what features, what expression. Or was that left up to the sculptor, carving the marble in his ancient workshop? Whoever it was that decided: the Winged Victory was then displayed at the site of the Sanctuary of the Great Gods, on the island of Samothrace in the Aegean Sea. The Sanctuary was the home of a mystery cult, one of the hubs of the ancient world. People were acquainted with that head, that face - people passed it every day, talked about it, thought about it, dreamed about it.
And now, it is a thing that nobody on the face of the Earth will ever have access to again. It doesn't matter how much knowledge we gather, what we build - that specific knowledge will always sit firmly beyond our reach. It stands ten feet high on the Daru Staircase at the Louvre. The sea in front of it these days is comprised of faces, but we don't get to see its face in return. Not now, not ever.
So what is the right way to approach a mystery like the Winged Victory of Samothrace? Well, it simply won't matter to a lot of people. This attitude is not shallow, or wrong, or incurious. They just don't believe it's important, and that's fine. Maybe in their world, it isn't. Anybody who is left might be tempted to compare it to its peers - the austere, downturned face of the Winged Victory of Brescia, or the images of Nike found on ancient coinage. That's good. That builds context and understanding. But it doesn't, and it can't, and it never will, tell you exactly what she looked like.
For the people for whom disinterest is not an option and the best reasoned approximations are not sufficient, what remains is not understanding, and its not knowledge. Its a posture.
References:
Suzume, 2025: The Original Function of the Winged Victory of Samothrace