In working about the Acropolis of Athens some years ago, I photographed, amongst other sculptures, the mutilated Victories in the Temple of Niké Apteros, the “Wingless Victory,” the little Ionic temple in which stood that statue of Victory of which it is said that “the Athenians made her without wings that she might never leave Athens”; and looking at the photographs afterward, when the impression of the comparatively diminutive size had passed, I was struck with the close resemblance of the type to that of the “Venus” of Melos. There are the same large, heroic proportions, the same ampleness in the development of the nude parts, the same art in the management of the draperies, and Richard Greenough, the American sculptor, has called my particular attention to the curious similarity in the treatment of the folds of the drapery, in the introduction of a plane between the folds, a resemblance not found in any other similar works as far as I know.
VICTORY UNTYING HER SANDAL (TEMPLE OF NIKÉ APTEROS, THE ACROPOLIS, ATHENS).
VICTORIES LEADING A BULL TO SACRIFICE (TEMPLE OF NIKÉ APTEROS, THE ACROPOLIS, ATHENS).
They are little high reliefs, part of a balustrade which surrounded the cortile of the Temple of Niké Apteros, hardly three feet high in their perfect state, and now without heads or hands or feet. There are four of them: one apparently untying her sandal; another,—that which best shows the type of the figure—raising an offering or crown, and two others leading a bull to sacrifice. I give the series. Note the exquisite composition of the drapery below the knee of the Victory raising the offering, and the superb flow of the entire draperies in the sandal-tying figure, but, above all, the Victory type in the whole assemblage. How absolutely it agrees with that of the Melian statue, and how utterly alone in all antique art that is but for these!
Since I have begun this study, it has twice happened that artist friends trained in the French school (i. e., in the only school which cultivates the perception of style in design, and the only one that emulates the Greek in its characteristics), both trained draughtsmen, came into my room, and without any remark I showed them the photographs of the Victories at Athens. They were new to both, but in one case as in the other the first expression was: “How like the Venus of Melos!” And the similarity runs through the treatment of every part—the management of drapery to express the action of the limbs, the firm, heroic mould of the figure, and the modeling of the round contours. Compare (in the casts, if possible, as the small scale of my illustrations will not show the point so clearly) the right shoulder of the Venus with that in the stooping Victory. The slight differences which exist are just what might be expected between a figure which stands as principal, isolated, and to be seen from all sides, and one which was secondary, subordinate, of partial decorative use, and to be seen only in one view. My illustrations will hardly convey the strikingness of the similarity, but I defy any one to compare side by side the series of Victories and the Melian statue in casts and not admit that the type, the treatment, the ideal, are the same, as sisters may be the same, or at least as mother and daughter.
The little Temple of Niké Apteros had once, we know, a statue of Victory without wings, and we know the bon mot, which I have given above, which it suggested. The decorations of the temple are attributed to Scopas and his school, and this Victory was unique, so far as we know, in being wingless. We may well conceive, with the symbolical meaning—talismanic, rather—implied in what we know of it by this witticism, that the Athenians would have a special anxiety to keep it from becoming a trophy in the hands of an enemy, even one who might not be disposed to desecrate the temples of the greater gods. Niké was rather an attribute or variation of Athena than a distinct goddess, and was as such both of great value to the Athenians, being the alter ego of their patroness; and of less reverence to the enemy, as not Minerva herself. At all events, when Pausanias visited Athens the Niké Apteros had gone. Her temple still stood there, and near it on the Acropolis hill stood some of the greatest art-treasures of the antique world untouched.
THE SO-CALLED VENUS OF MELOS—FRONT.