Venus de Milo (Aphrodite) - statue of the goddess of love surrounded by legends

The world-famous sculpture of the Venus de Milo, exhibited in the Louvre, the standard of female beauty, unfortunately does not have both hands. This magnificent work of art, carved from white marble, was found on the southern Greek island of Milos in 1820, hence the name Milos.

She was found by a simple Greek peasant named Yurgos. Yurgos had no idea about archaeology. He went about his business: he cultivated the plot that belonged to him and fed his large family. He found Venus by accident. One day, while digging his garden, he came across a stone slab, and then several hewn stones. These stones were highly valued on the island of Milos, where Yurgos lived. Local peasants, without particularly racking their brains over their origin, used them to build houses. Yurgos continued his excavations. Imagine his surprise when he suddenly discovered a kind of niche, and in it a magnificent marble statue of a half-naked woman of rare beauty. In the niche were two more figurines of Hermes, as scientists later determined, and several marble trinkets.

Yurgos realized that he had found something much more valuable than a pair of hewn stone slabs. He moved his find to a barn, and then, or so they usually say, sold it to a certain Marcelus, secretary of the French embassy in Istanbul.

There is only one thing that upsets us: this marvelous statue, which became a kind of synonym for ideal female beauty, like the Apollo Belvedere for men, had its own flaw: Venus’s hands were knocked off. This one - with stumps instead of arms - can still be seen in the Louvre; This is how she is represented in countless reproductions.

Where and when, under what circumstances did Venus de Milo lose her hands? The answer to this whole little-known story is as follows (a story about it was preserved in the unpublished memoirs of Dumont-D'Urville and partly in Matterer). Durville and Matterer did not buy Venus - it turned out to be beyond their means. They returned to their ship. A few days later the ship arrived in Istanbul. The ship's officers were invited to the French embassy. During the reception, Dumont-Durville spoke about Yurgos' discovery. The embassy secretary, Marcellus, literally, almost on the same day, departs on behalf of the ambassador on a special ship under the command of Lieutenant Robert to the island of Milos. Three days later he delivered the statue to Athens. But by this time Venus was already without arms. What happened? statue goddess art marble

Dumont-Durville writes about it this way: “As far as one can judge, the peasant, who was tired of waiting for buyers, lowered the price and sold it to a local priest. He wanted to present it as a gift to the translator of the Pasha of Constantinople. Mr. Marcelus arrived just at the moment when the statue was about to be loaded onto a ship for shipment to Constantinople. Seeing that this magnificent find was slipping from his hands, he took all measures to obtain it, and the priest, in the end, not without resistance, agreed to give it up.

But Durville is not entirely accurate: the priest did not even think of giving up the statue. On the contrary, he categorically refused to sell it. Then Marcelus demanded two dozen sailors from Robert, deciding, as Matterer writes, to free the goddess, no matter the cost. A real fight ensued. In this skirmish the French gained the upper hand. During the fight, Venus was thrown on the road and trampled into the mud, and her hands were beaten off.

This is the ugly truth. That is why Matterer, fearing a diplomatic scandal - in 1842 all the “heroes” of this story and, above all, Ambassador de Riviere were still alive - tried to hide it and only later described everything as it happened. This is why Dumont-Durville is so diplomatically cautious in his memoirs. This is why, finally, the Venus de Milo has no arms.

The figure of the goddess of love is devoid of arms and covered with chips, but once you see her you will never forget her beauty and proud image. A slight tilt of the small head on a slender neck, one shoulder slightly raised, the other slightly lowered, a flexible, curved figure. The tenderness and softness of the skin is set off by the cape sliding onto the hips. And it is impossible to take your eyes off the sculpture, permeated with femininity and lyricism, without doubting for a minute that before your eyes there is perfection - the goddess of love.

Russian writers who found themselves in the Paris Louvre in different years could not pass by this perfection created by human inspiration and skill.

Afanasy Fet - Venus de Milo

And chaste and bold,

Shining naked to the loins,

The divine body blooms

Unfading beauty.

Under this whimsical canopy

Slightly raised hair

How much proud bliss

It overflowed in the heavenly face!

So, all breathing with pathos passion,

All wet with sea foam

And wafting with all-victorious power,

You look into eternity before you.

1856. Currently, the statue of the Venus de Milo is kept on the 1st floor of the Louvre in a small round room, completing the suite of halls of the Department of Ancient Art, and not a single exhibit in any of them is pushed into the middle. Therefore, Venus is visible from afar - a low sculpture, appearing like a white ghost against the foggy background of gray walls.

When visitors enter the Louvre, they usually ask two questions: how to get to the Venus de Milo (the Greek goddess is also called by this Roman name) and where is La Gioconda?

1. The title of "Venus de Milo" is misleading

Venus - among the Romans, Aphrodite - among the Greeks.

It is widely believed that this statue depicts the Greek goddess of love and beauty. But the Greeks called this goddess Aphrodite, and Venus is the Roman name.

2. The statue was named after the place where it was discovered

Statue from the island of Milos.

On April 8, 1820, a farmer named Yorgos Kentrotas came across the statue in the ruins of an ancient city on the island of Milos.

3. The creation of the statue is attributed to Alexandros of Antioch

Masterpiece of Alexandros of Antioch.

Hellenistic period sculptor Alexandros is believed to have carved this stone masterpiece between 130 and 100 BC. The statue was originally found with a pedestal-slab on which it stood. There an inscription about the creator was discovered. Subsequently, the pedestal mysteriously disappeared.

4. The statue may not depict Venus

Amphitrite and Poseidon.

Some believe that the sculpture does not depict Aphrodite/Venus, but rather Amphitrite, a sea goddess who was especially revered on Milos. Still others even suggest that this is a statue of the goddess of victory Victoria. There is also debate about what the statue was originally holding. There are different versions that it could be a spear or a spinning wheel with threads. There is even a version that it was an apple, and the statue was Aphrodite, who was holding in her hands an award given to her by Paris as the most beautiful goddess.

5. The sculpture was presented to the King of France

Paris. Louvre. Venus de Milo.

Kentrotas originally found this statue with the French sailor Olivier Voutier. Having changed several owners while trying to remove it from the country, the statue eventually ended up with the French Ambassador in Istanbul, the Marquis de Riviere. It was the Marquis who presented Venus to the French King Louis XVIII, who, in turn, gave the statue to the Louvre, where it remains to this day.

6. The statue lost its arms because of the French

Statue without hands.

Kentrotas found fragments of the hands when he discovered the statue in ruins, but after they were reconstructed they were considered too "rough and ungraceful." Modern art historians believe that this does not mean at all that the hands did not belong to Venus; most likely they were damaged over the centuries. Both the arms and the original pedestal were lost when the statue was transported to Paris in 1820.

7. The original pedestal was purposefully removed

19th-century art historians decided that the Venus statue was the work of the Greek sculptor Praxiteles (it was very similar to his statues). This classified the statue as belonging to the classical era (480-323 BC), whose creations were valued much more than sculptures from the Hellenistic period. To support this version, even at the cost of misinformation, the pedestal was removed before the sculpture was presented to the king.

8. Venus de Milo - an object of national pride for the French

The Venus de Medici is a rival of the Venus de Milo.

During his conquests, Napoleon Bonaparte took one of the finest examples of Greek sculpture - the Venus de Medici statue - from Italy. In 1815, the French government returned this statue to Italy. And in 1820, France gladly took the opportunity to fill the empty space in the main French museum. The Venus de Milo became more popular than the Venus de Medici, which was also presented in the Louvre.

9. Renoir was not impressed by the sculpture

Renoir questioned the beauty of Venus.

Perhaps the most famous of the detractors of the Venus de Milo, the famous impressionist artist stated that the sculpture is very far from depicting female beauty.

10. Venus was hidden during World War II

One of the castles in the French province.

By the fall of 1939, with the threat of war looming over Paris, the Venus de Milo, along with several other priceless artifacts such as the sculpture of the Nike of Samothrace and works by Michelangelo, were removed from the Louvre to be stored in various castles in the French countryside.

11. Venus was robbed

Venus de Milo. Louvre. Paris.

Venus is missing more than just hands. It was originally decorated with jewelry, including bracelets, earrings and a tiara. These decorations disappeared a long time ago, but there were holes in the marble for fastening.

Venus received its regional “surname” from the name of the island on which it was found in 1820 by a French sailor. Milos, today a Greek territory, was at that time under the rule of the Ottoman Empire.

History of Venus de Milo

The Frenchman, accompanied by a Greek guide, found a beautiful statue - generally well preserved, but divided in half. The Turkish authorities, after exhaustive bidding, finally allowed the statue to be removed from the island, but later, realizing how much value it had lost, they organized an exemplary punishment for the Greeks who participated in the search and transportation. In the process of the latter, the hands were lost. In France, Venus was presented to Louis XVIII and was soon transferred to the Louvre, where it remains to this day.

Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt in the Louvre. (wikipedia.org)

On the pedestal, which was found along with the sculpture and then lost, it is indicated that the statue was made by Alexander, son of Menidas, a citizen of Antioch on the Meander. And this happened around 130 BC.

The statue was sculpted in parts, which were then put together. A similar technique was popular in the Cyclades. Judging by the remaining mounting holes, Venus was wearing bracelets, earrings and a headband, and the marble was painted. For its time, the sculpture is unique with its graceful curve of the body and skillfully executed drapery of the falling fabric.

3D reconstruction of the statue. Source: wikipedia.org

It is generally accepted that the half-naked goddess personifies Aphrodite (in the Roman tradition - Venus), but the absence of hands in which she could hold the attributes that characterize her gives rise to numerous hypotheses.

Statue of Venus de Milo: versions

There is an assumption that Venus was holding an apple. There are hypotheses that this is the goddess of the sea, Amphitrite, who was extremely revered in Milos. She could be paired with someone, one of her hands resting on the shoulder of the neighboring sculpture. She could hold a bow or an amphora - attributes of Artemis.

There is also a hypothesis that the sculpture was not a goddess, but a heteroa - one of those that was often depicted on vases.

Image of the statue of Praxiteles. (wikipedia.org)

For its beautiful eyes and enchanting curves, the sculpture is still considered the goddess of love and belongs to the so-called Cnidus type. Around 350 BC e. Praxiteles sculpted a naked goddess who held fallen clothes. The statue has not survived, but the image was reproduced by numerous followers in sculpture and painting.

Greek sculpture had a tremendous influence on subsequent eras. In many ways, the ideals of body beauty were first embodied in marble by ancient masters and, with minor variations, have survived to this day. The Hellenistic period, to which the Venus de Milo belongs, was a time of change: the social institutions traditional to classical Greece became obsolete, and new ones arose. Foundations and norms, worldviews, and attitudes toward art changed.

Aesthetics were formed under the influence of the cultures of those peoples who were part of the empire as it expanded. The influence of the East is becoming more and more noticeable with its attention to decor, details, sensuality and emotionality, which appears even in marble. The sculpture was no longer the embodiment of the static position of an ideal body, but demonstrated the passions that overwhelmed the heroes and represented genre multi-figure scenes, which were later used by painters.

Details Category: Masterpieces of ancient and medieval fine art and architecture Published 07/16/2016 11:15 Views: 3084

The statue of Venus de Milo was found in 1820 on the island of Milos (Melos), one of the Cyclades islands of Greece in the Aegean Sea.

This is an ancient Greek sculpture depicting the goddess of love Aphrodite. Venus is the Latin equivalent of the name of the goddess of love (see the article Olympian gods).

Presumably Alexander of Antioch's "Venus de Milo" (circa 130-100 BC). Marble. Height 2.02 m. Louvre (Paris)

Description of the sculpture

The proportions of Venus’s figure have long been considered ideal: height 164 cm, hips 93 cm, waist 69 cm, chest volume 89 cm.
Everything about her was admired: her delicate facial features, her simple but neat hairstyle, her graceful posture, the folds of her clothes perfectly executed by the sculptor.
It is believed that Venus had a shield (or an apple) in her left hand, and with her right hand she, ashamed, held the falling clothes.
Venus (Aphrodite) is a type Aphrodite of Knidos(lat. Venus pudica) - Venus is bashful), because she holds the fallen robe with her hand. The first sculpture of this type was made by Praxiteles around 350 BC. e.
Praxiteles- Ancient Greek sculptor of the 4th century. BC e. Most of Praxiteles' works are known from Roman copies or from descriptions by ancient authors. He is considered the author of the famous compositions “Hermes with the Child Dionysus” and “Apollo Killing the Lizard.” The sculptures of Praxiteles were painted by the Athenian artist Nicias.
No sculptor was able to achieve greater perfection in conveying the grace of the body and the subtle harmony of the spirit than Praxiteles. His Aphrodite of Knidos was considered in ancient times not only the best creation of the author, but also the best statue of all time

Praxiteles "Aphrodite of Cnidus" (350-330 BC). Louvre (Paris)
Praxiteles became the first sculptor to create a monumental image of a naked goddess.
Praxiteles performed two options: a naked goddess and a clothed goddess.

The customers chose the traditional option, with a draped figure. No copies or descriptions of it survived, and it disappeared.

And the Aphrodite of Knidos, which remained in the sculptor’s workshop, was bought by residents of the Asia Minor city of Knidos. Pilgrims began to flock here, attracted by the famous sculpture. Aphrodite stood in an open-air temple, visible from all sides.
For some time, the statue of the Venus de Milo was also attributed to Praxiteles. But later an inscription was found on the pedestal: “Agesander (or Alexander, the inscription was illegible), son of Menidas, citizen of Antioch on the Meander, made this statue.” Thus, it became clear that the statue dates back to the Hellenistic period. Subsequently, the pedestal disappeared and has not been found to date.

History of the find

The story of the discovery of the Venus de Milo statue has been told in various interpretations. One of them is this: a certain French sailor Olivier Voutier with a local peasant Yorgos Kentrotas dug up a statue in the ruins of an ancient amphitheater. But the captain of the ship did not give permission to export the sculpture.
Another naval officer, Jules Dumont-D'Urville, received such permission in Istanbul, but when he returned from there, he found the statue on a Russian ship prepared for transportation to Istanbul. Dumont-D'Urville secured the ransom of the statue.
During the conflict between the French and the Turks (the owners of the island), who sought to prevent the statue from being taken outside the empire, the hands of the Venus de Milo were lost.
Currently, the statue of the Venus de Milo is kept in a gallery specially prepared for it on the first floor of the Louvre.

G. Uspensky “Straightened”

The hero of the story is the rural teacher Tyapushkin. Once he had a chance to visit Paris as a home teacher for the children of a landowner. Walking around Paris, Tyapushkin ended up in the Louvre: “...unexpectedly made it to the Louvre; without the slightest moral need I entered the vestibule of the museum; Having entered the museum, I mechanically walked back and forth, mechanically looked at the antique sculpture, which, of course, in my Tyapushkin position, I understood absolutely nothing, but felt only fatigue, tinnitus and tingling in my temples; - and suddenly, in complete bewilderment, without knowing why, struck by something extraordinary, incomprehensible, he stopped in front of the Venus de Milo in that large room that anyone who has been to the Louvre knows and probably remembers in every detail.
I stood in front of her, looked at her and constantly asked myself: “What happened to me?” I asked myself this from the first moment, as soon as I saw the statue, because from that very moment I felt that great joy had happened to me... Until now, I was like (I suddenly felt) like this crumpled one in my hand glove. Does it look like a human hand? No, it's just some kind of leather lump. But then I blew into it, and it became like a human hand. Something that I couldn’t understand blew into the depths of my crumpled, crippled, exhausted being and straightened me, ran through the goosebumps of a reviving body where there seemed to be no sensitivity, made everything “crunch” just like when a person grows , also made me wake up vigorously, without even feeling any signs of recent sleep, and filled my expanding chest and my entire growing body with freshness and light.
I looked at this stone riddle with both eyes, wondering why it happened like this? What it is? Where and what is the secret of this firm, calm, joyful state of my entire being, which, unknown how, poured into me? And he absolutely could not answer a single question; I felt that there was no word in the human language that could define the life-giving mystery of this stone creature. But I did not doubt for a minute that the watchman, the interpreter of the Louvre miracles, was telling the absolute truth, claiming that Heine came to sit on this narrow sofa, upholstered in red velvet... And yet I could not determine in what is the secret of this work of art and what exactly, what features, what lines give life, “straighten” and expand the crumpled human soul. I constantly thought about this and still could not convey or say anything definite. I don’t know how long I would have languished like this if one completely random circumstance had not led me, as it seems to me, to the real road and finally given me the opportunity to answer the question that was insoluble for me: what’s the matter, what’s the matter? secret?"

He often went to the Louvre to “straighten” his soul.
“Straightened” means that a bent man, who had lost all foundation and support in life, was straightened by a beautiful work of art. Gave him the strength to live. This is spiritual healing - a person comes into spiritual contact with a great work of art. Venus de Milo is an image of beauty, a sublime, spiritually filled image. A true work of art can transform a person's life.

What to look at: Venus (or in Greek mythology, Aphrodite), the goddess of love and beauty, is personified by many statues, but how different is the image embodied in them. And the most famous of them is the world famous Venus de Milo, staged in the Department of Ancient Art in the Louvre. One of the “three pillars of the Louvre”, which every Louvre visitor considers it his duty to see (the other two are Nike of Samothrace and Gioconda).

It is believed that its creator was the sculptor Agesander or Alexandros of Antioch (the inscription is illegible). Previously attributed to Praxiteles. The sculpture is a type of Aphrodite of Cnidus (Venus pudica, shy Venus): a goddess holding a fallen robe with her hand (the first sculpture of this type was sculpted around 350 BC by Praxiteles). It was this Venus who gave the world modern beauty standards: 90-60-90, because her proportions are 86x69x93 with a height of 164 cm.

Researchers and art historians have long attributed the Venus de Milo to that period of Greek art called the “late classics.” The majesty of the goddess’s posture, the smoothness of divine contours, the calmness of her face - all this makes her similar to the works of the 4th century BC. But some marble processing techniques forced scientists to push back the date of execution of this masterpiece by two centuries.

The way to the Louvre.
The statue was accidentally discovered on the island of Milos in 1820 by a Greek peasant. She probably spent at least two thousand years in underground captivity. Whoever placed her there obviously wanted to save her from the impending disaster. (By the way, this was not the last attempt to save the statue. In 1870, fifty years after the Venus de Milo was found, it was again hidden underground - in the cellar of the Parisian police prefecture. The Germans were shooting at Paris and were close to the capital. Prefecture soon burned down. But the statue, fortunately, remained intact.) In order to profitably sell his find, the Greek peasant for the time being hid the ancient goddess in a goat pen. It was here that the young French officer Dumont-Durville saw her. An educated officer, a participant in the expedition to the Greek islands, he immediately appreciated the well-preserved masterpiece. Undoubtedly, it was the Greek goddess of love and beauty Venus. Moreover, she was holding in her hand an apple, given to her by Paris in the famous dispute between the three goddesses.

The peasant asked for a huge price for his find, but Dumont-D'Urville did not have that kind of money. However, he understood the true value of the sculpture and persuaded the peasant not to sell Venus until he got the required amount. The officer had to go to the French consul in Constantinople to persuade him to buy the statue for the French museum.

But, returning to Milos, Dumont-D'Urville learned that the statue had already been sold to some Turkish official and was even packed in a box. For a huge bribe, Dumont-D'Urville again bought Venus. She was urgently placed on a stretcher and taken to the port where the French ship was moored. Literally immediately the Turks missed the loss. In the ensuing scuffle, Venus passed from the French to the Turks and back several times. During that fight, the marble hands of the goddess suffered. The ship with the statue was forced to urgently sail, and the hands of Venus were left in the port. They have not been found to this day.

But even the ancient goddess, deprived of arms and covered with chips, enchants everyone so much with her perfection that you simply do not notice these flaws and damages. Her small head was slightly tilted on her slender neck, one shoulder rose and the other fell, her figure bent flexibly. The softness and tenderness of Venus’s skin is set off by the drapery that has slipped onto her hips, and now it is impossible to take your eyes off the sculpture, which has been conquering the world with its enchanting beauty and femininity for almost two centuries.

Hands of Venus.
When the Venus de Milo was first exhibited at the Louvre, the famous writer Chateaubriand said: "Greece has never given us better evidence of its greatness!" And almost immediately assumptions began to pour in about the original position of the hands of the ancient goddess.

At the end of 1896, the French newspaper Illustration published a message from a certain Marquis de Trogoff that his father, who served as an officer in the Mediterranean, saw the statue intact, and that the goddess was holding an apple in her hands.

If she was holding Paris's apple, how were her hands positioned? True, the Marquis’s statements were subsequently refuted by the French scientist S. Reinac. However, de Trogoff's article and S. Reinac's refutation aroused even more interest in the ancient statue. The German professor Hass, for example, argued that the ancient Greek sculptor depicted the goddess after ablution, when she was about to anoint her body with juice. The Swedish scientist G. Saloman suggested that Venus is the embodiment of voluptuousness: the goddess, using all her charm, leads someone astray.

Or maybe it was an entire sculptural composition, from which only Venus has reached us? Many researchers supported the version of the Swedish scientist, in particular, Cartmer de Quincey suggested that Venus was depicted in a group with the god of war, Mars. "Since Venus has- he wrote, - judging by the position of the shoulder, the hand was raised; she probably leaned with this hand on Mars’s shoulder; she put her right hand into his left hand". In the 19th century, they tried to reconstruct and restore the original appearance of the beautiful Venus; there were even attempts to attach wings to her. But the “finished” sculpture was losing its mystical charm, so it was decided not to restore the statue.

The Louvre really knows how to display masterpieces. Thus, the statue of the Venus de Milo is placed in the middle of a small hall, and in front of it stretches a long suite of rooms in which none of the exhibits are placed in the middle. Because of this, as soon as the viewer enters the antique department, he immediately sees only Venus - a low sculpture, appearing like a white ghost against the foggy background of gray walls...