Venus de Milo on display at the Louvre

The Aphrodite of Milos, better known as the Venus de Milo, is an ancient Greek statue and one of the most famous works of ancient Greek sculpture. It is believed to depict Aphrodite (called Venus by the Romans), the Greek goddess of love and beauty. It is a marble sculpture, slightly larger than life size at 203 cm (80 inches) high. Its arms and original plinth have been lost. From an inscription that was on its plinth, it is thought to be the work of Alexandros of Antioch; it was earlier mistakenly attributed to the master sculptor Praxiteles. It is at present on display at the Louvre Museum in Paris. It is acullly made of milo Venus of Willendorf Venus figurines is an umbrella term for a number of prehistoric items, mostly in statuette form, of obese or pregnant women (which is disputed) from the Aurignacian or Gravettian period of the upper Palaeolithic, found in Europe. ... Image File history File links Metadata Size of this preview: 357 × 599 pixelsFull resolution (2250 × 3775 pixel, file size: 3. ... Image File history File links Metadata Size of this preview: 357 × 599 pixelsFull resolution (2250 × 3775 pixel, file size: 3. ... This article is about the museum. ... The term ancient Greece refers to the period of Greek history in Classical Antiquity, lasting ca. ... Kouros of the Archaic period, Thebes Archaeological Museum The sculpture of Ancient Greece is by far the most important surviving form of Ancient Greek art, although only a small fragment of Greek sculptural output has survived. ... The Birth of Venus, (detail) by Sandro Botticelli, 1485 For other uses, see Aphrodite (disambiguation). ... Marble Venus of the Capitoline Venus type, Roman (British Museum) Venus was a major Roman goddess principally associated with love and beauty, the rough equivalent of the Greek goddess Aphrodite. ... A head of Minerva found in the ruins of the Roman baths in Bath Roman mythology, the mythological beliefs of the people of Ancient Rome, can be considered as having two parts. ... For other uses, see Marble (disambiguation). ... Plinth of the Sign of the Kiwi, Dyers Pass, Port Hills, Christchurch (NZ) c 1917 - Collection: Christchurch City Libraries Hoysala temple on plinth Look up Plinth in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Alexandros of Antioch was an otherwise unknown master of the Hellenistic age who is most well known today for the Venus de Milo (Aphrodite of Milos) at the Louvre Museum in Paris, France. ... Praxiteles of Athens, the son of Cephisodotus, was the greatest of the Attic sculptors of the 4th century BC, who has left an imperishable mark on the history of art. ... This article is about the museum. ... This article is about the capital of France. ...

Discovery and fame

Drawing by Debay of the statue with the missing inscribed plinth published in 1821.

The statue was discovered by a peasant named Yorgos Kentrotas in 1820 inside a buried niche within the ancient city ruins of Milos on the Aegean island of the same name, also called Melos or Milo. It was found in two main pieces (the upper torso and the lower draped legs) along with several herms (pillars topped with heads), fragments of the upper left arm and left hand holding an apple, and an inscribed plinth. Oliver Voutier, a French naval officer were exploring the island. With the help of the young farmer,Voutier began to dig around what were clearly ancient ruins. In only a few hours’ time,Voutier uncovered a piece of art that would become renowned throughout the world. About 10 days later, another French naval officer, Jules Dumont d'Urville, recognized its significance and arranged for a purchase by the French ambassador to Turkey, the Marquis de Riviere. ImageMetadata File history File links Download high resolution version (976x1416, 236 KB) Engraving from frontispiece of Sur la statue antique de Vénus Victrix : découverte dans lîle de Milo en 1820, transportée à Paris et donée au roi par M. le Marquis de Rivière . ... ImageMetadata File history File links Download high resolution version (976x1416, 236 KB) Engraving from frontispiece of Sur la statue antique de Vénus Victrix : découverte dans lîle de Milo en 1820, transportée à Paris et donée au roi par M. le Marquis de Rivière . ... Look up Aegean Sea in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Herma of Demosthenes on the market place of Athens, work by Polyeuktos, ca. ... This article is about the French explorer. ...

Twelve days out of Touloun the ship was anchored off the island of Melos. Ashore, d'Urville and [fellow officer] Matterer met a Greek peasant, who a few days earlier while ploughing had uncovered blocks of marble and a statue in two pieces, which he offered cheaply to the two young men. It was of a naked woman with an apple in her raised left hand, the right hand holding a draped sash falling from hips to feet, both hands damaged and separated from the body. Even with a broken nose, the face was beautiful. D'Urville the classicist recognized the Venus of the Judgement of Paris. It was, of course, the Venus de Milo. He was eager to acquire it, but his practical captain, apparently uninterested in antiquities, said there was nowhere to store it on the ship, so the transaction lapsed. The tenacious d'Urville on arrival at Constantinople showed the sketches he had made to the French ambassador, the Marquis de Riviére, who sent his secretary in a French Navy vessel to buy it for France. Before he could take delivery, French sailors had to fight Greek brigands for possession. In the mêlée the statue was roughly dragged across rocks to the ship, breaking off both arms, and the sailors refused to go back to search for them.^[1]

News of the discovery took longer than normal to get to the French ambassador. The peasant grew tired of waiting for payment and was pressured into selling to a local priest, who planned to present the statue as a gift to a translator working for the Sultan in Constantinople (present day Istanbul, Turkey). This article is about the city before the Fall of Constantinople (1453). ... Istanbul (Turkish: , Greek: , historically Byzantium and later Constantinople; see other names) is Turkeys most populous city, and its cultural and financial center. ...

The French ambassador's representative arrived just as the statue was being loaded aboard a ship bound for Constantinople and persuaded the island's primates (chief citizens) to annul the sale and honor the first offer.

Upon learning of the reversal of the sale, the translator had the primates whipped and fined but was eventually reprimanded by the Sultan after the French ambassador complained to him about the mistreatment of the island primates. The primates were reimbursed and ceded all future claims to the statue in gratitude.

Upon arrival at the Louvre, the statue was reassembled, but the fragments of the left hand and arm were initially dismissed as being a later restoration because of the rougher workmanship.^{[citation needed]} It is now accepted that the left hand holding the apple and the left arm are in fact original to the statue but were not as well finished as the rest of the statue since they would have been somewhat above eye level and difficult to see.^{[citation needed]} This was a standard practice for many sculptors of the era—less visible parts of statues were often not as well finished since they would typically be invisible to the casual observer.^{[citation needed]} Sculptures and statues from this era were normally carved out of several blocks of stone and carefully pieced together.^{[citation needed]} The Venus de Milo turns out to have been carved from at least six to seven blocks of Parian marble: one block for the nude torso, another block for the draped legs, another block apiece for each arm, another small block for the left foot, another block for the inscribed plinth and finally the separately carved herm that stood beside the goddess.

front view	three-quarter view	back view

The controversial plinth was initially found to fit perfectly as part of the statue, but after it was translated and dated, the embarrassed experts who had publicized the statue as a possible original work by the artist Praxiteles dismissed it as another later addition to the statue. The inscription read: "...(Alex)andros son of Menides, citizen of Antioch on the Maeander made this (statue)...". The inscribed plinth would have moved the dating of the statue from the Classical Age to the Hellenistic Age because of the style of lettering and the mention of the ancient city of Antioch on the Maeander, which did not exist at the time Praxiteles lived.^{[citation needed]} The Hellenistic Age was at that time considered a period of decline for Greek art. The plinth mysteriously disappeared shortly before the statue was presented to King Louis XVIII in 1821 and only survives in two drawings and an early description. The king eventually presented the statue to the Louvre museum in Paris, where it still stands on public display. This image has been released into the public domain by the copyright holder, its copyright has expired, or it is ineligible for copyright. ... Image File history File linksMetadata Download high-resolution version (960x1280, 174 KB) Summary Licensing File links The following pages on the English Wikipedia link to this file (pages on other projects are not listed): Venus de Milo User:Shawnlipowski Metadata This file contains additional information, probably added from the digital... This image has been released into the public domain by the copyright holder, its copyright has expired, or it is ineligible for copyright. ... Praxiteles of Athens, the son of Cephisodotus, was the greatest of the Attic sculptors of the 4th century BC, who has left an imperishable mark on the history of art. ... Antiochia on the Maeander also Antioch on the Maeander (Greek: Αντιόχεια του Μαίανδρου; Latin: Antiochia ad Mæandrum), earlier Pythopolis, was a city of ancient Caria, in Anatolia. ... This article describes the ancient classical period: for the classical period in music (second half of the 18th century): see Classical music era. ... The term Hellenistic (established by the German historian Johann Gustav Droysen) in the history of the ancient world is used to refer to the shift from a culture dominated by ethnic Greeks, however scattered geographically, to a culture dominated by Greek-speakers of whatever ethnicity, and from the political dominance... Antiochia on the Maeander also Antioch on the Maeander (Greek: Αντιόχεια του Μαίανδρου; Latin: Antiochia ad Mæandrum), earlier Pythopolis, was a city of ancient Caria, in Anatolia. ... The art of ancient Greece has exercised an enormous influence on the culture of many countries from ancient times until the present, particularly in the areas of sculpture and architecture. ... Louis XVIII (17 November 1755 – 16 September 1824), was a King of France and Navarre. ... This article is about the museum. ... The Louvre Museum in Paris, one of the largest and most famous museums in the world. ... This article is about the capital of France. ...

The statue's great fame in the 19th century was not simply the result of its admitted beauty, but also owed much to a major propaganda effort by the French authorities. In 1815 France had returned the Medici Venus to the Italians after it had been looted from Italy by Napoleon Bonaparte. The Medici Venus, regarded as one of the finest Classical sculptures in existence, caused the French to consciously promote the Venus de Milo as a greater treasure than that which they had recently lost. It was duly praised by artists and critics as the epitome of graceful female beauty; however, Pierre-Auguste Renoir was clearly not following the script when he dismissed it as a "big gendarme". The Venus de Medici The Venus de Medici or Medici Venus is a lifesize (1. ... Bonaparte as general Napoleon Bonaparte ( 15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821) was a general of the French Revolution and was the ruler of France as First Consul (Premier Consul) of the French Republic from November 11, 1799 to May 18, 1804, then as Emperor of the French (Empereur des... Pierre-Auguste Renoir (February 25, 1841–December 3, 1919) was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. ... Gendarme (pronounced ) can mean: Gendarme (historical): a horseman, usually of noble birth, belonging to the cavalry of the French army in the late-Medieval to Early Modern periods of European history A military police officer belonging a gendarmerie. ...

Although the statue is widely renowned for the mystery of its missing arms, enough evidence remains to prove that the right arm was lowered across the torso with the right hand resting on the raised left knee so the sliding drapery wrapped around the hips and legs could be held in place.^{[citation needed]} There is a filled in hole below the right breast that originally contained a metal tenon that would have supported the separately carved right arm.

The left arm was held at just below the eye level of the statue above a herm while holding an apple. The right side of the statue is more carefully worked and finished than the left side or back, indicating that the statue was intended to be seen mainly as a profile from its right. The left hand would have held the apple up into the air further back inside the niche the statue was set in. When the left hand was still attached, it would have been clear to an observer that the goddess was looking at the apple she held up in her left hand.

The statue would have been painted in a riot of colors as was the custom of the era, decked out in jewelery and positioned inside a niche inside a gymnasium. The painting of the statue along with the bedecking in jewelery was intended to make it appear more lifelike. Today, all traces of the paint have disappeared and the only signs of the armbands, necklace, earrings and crown are the attachment holes. The gymnasium functioned as a training facility for competitors in public games. ...

See also

• Aphrodite of Knidos

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References

1. ^ Two Voyages to the South Seas, Memoirs of Captain Jules S.-C. Dumont D'Urville,introduction by Helen Rosenmann

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Venus de Milo

• Musée du Louvre – Louvre Museum : Venus de Milo
• Controversy and politics over the sculptor's identity
• Unusual Louvre Museum Image of the Venus di Milo.