'Diana of Versailles' Statue Discovered at Titanic Wreckage
The first time the sculpture was spotted since an expedition in 1986.
The RMS Titanic sunk over 112 years ago, but the tragic legacy left by the ocean liner continues to capture imaginations a century later. As popularized through James Cameron’s 1997 film, there was a wealth of art on board the ship, many of which have either been lost completely or continue to lay dormant, submerged 12,500 feet on the seafloor. Researchers recently uncovered a two-foot-tall bronze sculpture of Diana of Versailles that once stood on top of a fireplace mantle in a first class lounge.
The discovery was recorded by RMS Titanic Inc, a Georgia-based company that owns the legal rights to inspect the ship’s wreckage, who recently spent 20 days taking millions of high resolution scans of the site to track “historically significant and at-risk artifacts [that] can be identified for safe recovery in future expeditions,” the group tells the Guardian. The statue of the goddess Diana is based on a replica housed at the Louvre and was only noticed in the final few hours of the expedition as it barely stuck out of sand, surrounded by weathered debris.
“The discovery of the statue of Diana was an exciting moment. But we are saddened by the loss of the iconic bow railing and other evidence of decay which has only strengthened our commitment to preserving Titanic’s legacy,” said Tomasina Ray, RMS Titanic Inc’s director of collections, in a statement.
The bow railing was one of the centerpiece moments in Cameron’s film, as Jack Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio) hoists Rose DeWitt Bukater (Kate Winslett) during sunset, hours before the ship’s tragic fate.
