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WonderArt fact

In 1821 the Louvre chose to show the Venus de Milo without arms.

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The marble statue, just over 2 metres tall, is usually identified as the goddess Aphrodite. A farmer dug it up on the Greek island of Milos on 8 April 1820, when the island was part of the Ottoman Empire. A French naval officer, Olivier Voutier, watched him dig and sketched the pieces, and French diplomats bought it for King Louis XVIII. It dates from the Hellenistic period, probably the 2nd century BC, and a now-lost inscription may name the sculptor as Alexandros of Antioch on the Maeander, a town in western Anatolia. Found with it were part of an arm and a hand holding an apple; recent analysis supports the idea that the hand belongs to the statue, so she may once have held the golden apple that Paris awarded to Aphrodite in Greek myth. Restoring missing limbs was normal at the time, but the scholar Quatremère de Quincy argued against it, believing she had once stood beside a lost statue of Mars. The Louvre showed her as she was found.

Türkçe oku
Louvre, 1821'de Milo Venüsü'nü kolsuz sergilemeyi seçti.

Mermer heykelin boyu 2 metreyi biraz aşar ve genellikle tanrıça Afrodit olarak tanımlanır. Ege'deki Milos Adası'nda bir çiftçi onu 8 Nisan 1820'de, ada henüz Osmanlı İmparatorluğu'na bağlıyken topraktan çıkardı. Fransız deniz subayı Olivier Voutier kazıyı izleyip parçaların çizimini yaptı; Fransız diplomatlar da heykeli Kral XVIII. Louis için satın aldı. Heykel Helenistik döneme, büyük olasılıkla MÖ 2. yüzyıla tarihlenir; bugün kayıp olan bir yazıt, heykeltıraşın Batı Anadolu'da, Menderes kıyısındaki Antiokheia kentinden Aleksandros olabileceğini düşündürür. Heykelle birlikte bir kol parçası ve elma tutan bir el de bulundu. Yakın zamandaki incelemeler elin heykele ait olduğunu destekliyor; yani Afrodit bir zamanlar, Yunan mitolojisinde Paris'in ona verdiği altın elmayı tutuyor olabilir. O dönemde eksik uzuvları tamamlamak olağan bir uygulamaydı. Ama Fransız bilgin Quatremère de Quincy buna karşı çıktı; heykelin bir zamanlar kayıp bir Mars heykelinin yanında durduğuna inanıyordu. Louvre da heykeli bulunduğu gibi sergiledi.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: Venus de Milo
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