A remarkable piece of Titanic history has resurfaced after nearly four decades. Researchers rediscovered a stunning bronze statue of Artemis, known as Diana of Versailles in Roman mythology, during a 2024 expedition to the legendary shipwreck site. The two-foot sculpture once graced the mantelpiece of the first-class lounge aboard the doomed luxury liner and was spotted just hours before the expedition ended, barely visible beneath sand and debris on the ocean floor.
RMS Titanic Inc., the Georgia-based company with exclusive salvage rights to the wreck, spent 20 days capturing over two million high-resolution images of the site during their first expedition since 2010. The statue was originally photographed in 1986 by Robert Ballard but its location was never marked, making it lost once again until this recent discovery. When the Titanic broke apart after striking an iceberg in April 1912, the statue was torn from its elegant perch and scattered among the debris field 400 miles off Newfoundland, Canada.
In Greek mythology, Artemis was daughter of Zeus and twin sister of Apollo. She served as goddess of the hunt, wilderness, and the moon. The Titanic statue is a replica of the Diana of Versailles housed in the Louvre Museum, itself a Roman copy of a Greek bronze original attributed to sculptor Leochares around 325 BC 
The expedition also revealed continued deterioration of the wreck, including a 15-foot section of the iconic bow railing that has fallen to the seafloor
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