La Victoire Leaves the Louvre

Her great wings heave with muscular strength, shoulder joints rotating backwards to slow her ascent.  Gauzy tunic strains against her perfect body, held by the wind against her breasts, belly, and the leg that is alighting first, toes pressing daintily onto the ship’s prow.

Nike, winged goddess, herald of Victory, once looked proudly down upon the harbour of Samothrace in Greece, placed there to honour the Kabeiroi, twin sons of the god Hephaestus, protectors of sailors.

In the final days of August,1939, La Victoire, as she is known in France, looked out, or would have if she could, over another great height - the grand Daru staircase of the Louvre museum in Paris.  From that vantage, she oversaw the great evacuation of the Louvre’s artwork, masterminded by Jacques Jaujard, director of national museums, who arranged secret hiding places for the artwork throughout the French countryside before the start of The War.  Like the safe movement of England’s children, also days before war was declared, this evacuation was planned far in advance.

Of all the pieces in the museum, the advancing and looting German army would lust after the symbolism of La Victoire as well as her beauty.  But when they arrived at the museum, it was empty.  She, the Winged Victory of Samothrace, had been the last piece of art moved on September 3, 1939, the day that France, like Great Britain, declared war on Nazi Germany.  She would return, unscathed, in 1945.