This caused the French to hide the plinth, in an effort to conceal this fact before the statue's introduction to the Louvre in 1821. Based on early drawings, the plinth that had been detached from the statue was known to have dates on it, which revealed that it was created after the Classical period, which was the most desirable artistic period. The hole that this left in French culture allowed the perfect path for the Venus de Milo to become an international icon. The museum lost some of its most iconic pieces, such as Rome's Laocoon and His Sons and Italy's Venus de' Medici. The Louvre and in turn, French art as a whole, had suffered great losses when Napoleon Bonaparte's looted art collection was returned to their countries of origin. The exact circumstances in which she was discovered, however, are uncertain. Upon its discovery in 1820, the Venus de Milo was considered to be a significant artistic finding, but did not gain its status as an icon until later on. The consensus is that the statue was found in two large 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. It was in this cavity, which had three wings, that Kendrotas first noticed the upper part of the statue. Duyker asserts that Kendrotas was taking stone from a ruined chapel on the edge of his property – terraced land that had once formed part of a Roman gymnasium – and that he discovered an oblong cavity some 1.2 m × 1.5 m (3 ft 11 in × 4 ft 11 in) deep in the volcanic tuff. The Australian historian Edward Duyker, citing a letter written by Louis Brest who was the French consul in Milos in 1820, asserts the discoverer of the statue was Theodoros Kendrotas and that he has been confused with his younger son Georgios (Γεώργιος, transliterated into the Latin alphabet phonetically as Yorgos) who later claimed credit for the find. He apparently based these assertions on an article he had read in the Century Magazine. Paul Carus gave the site of discovery as "the ruins of an ancient theater in the vicinity of Castro, the capital of the island", adding that Bottonis and his son "came accidentally across a small cave, carefully covered with a heavy slab and concealed, which contained a fine marble statue in two pieces, together with several other marble fragments. ![]() Įlsewhere, the discoverers are identified as the Greeks Yorgos Bottonis and his son Antonio. This ancient city is the current village of Trypiti, on the island of Milos (also called Melos, or Milo) in the Aegean, which was then a part of the Ottoman Empire. It is generally asserted that the Venus de Milo was discovered on 8 April 1820 by a Greek farmer named Yorgos Kentrotas, inside a buried niche within the ancient city ruins of Milos. Site of the discovery of the Venus de Milo The statue is missing both arms, with part of one arm, as well as the original plinth, being lost after the statue's rediscovery. Made of Parian marble, the statue is larger than life size, standing 204 cm (6 ft 8 in) high. The work was originally attributed to the 4th century Athenian sculptor Praxiteles, but, based upon an inscription on its plinth, it is now widely agreed that the statue was created later, and instead is the work of Alexandros of Antioch. ![]() Some scholars theorize that the statue actually represents the sea-goddess Amphitrite, who was venerated on the island in which the statue was found. The sculpture is sometimes called the Aphrodite de Milos, due to the imprecision of naming the Greek sculpture after a Roman deity (Venus). ![]() The Venus de Milo is believed to depict Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, whose Roman counterpart was Venus. It is one of the most famous works of ancient Greek sculpture, having been prominently displayed at the Louvre Museum since shortly after the statue was rediscovered on the island of Milos, Greece, in 1820. ![]() The Venus de Milo ( / d ə ˈ m aɪ l oʊ, d ə ˈ m iː l oʊ/ Greek: Αφροδίτη της Μήλου, romanized: Afrodíti tis Mílou) is an ancient Greek sculpture that was created during the Hellenistic period, sometime between 150 and 125 BC. For other uses, see Venus de Milo (disambiguation).
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