Room , Sully wing, Level 0. Find out more about the artwork. Like many classical statues, the Venus de Milo was carved from separate blocks of Parian marble. The body was sculpted in two parts; the join between the torso and legs is difficult to see, hidden in the drapery at the hips.
We know from a mounting hole at the left shoulder that the arms were also carved separately then added to the torso. Other sculptures in the same room show how separately carved blocks were joined together later. The Venus of Arles had embodied ideal classical beauty before the Venus de Milo arrived on the scene! She was also named after the place where she was found — in this case the Roman theatre of Arles in southern France, in , during the reign of Louis XIV. Again, there was debate as to whether she was Venus or another goddess, but the Sun King, greatly impressed by the ancient masterpiece, decided that she was a Venus.
Explore The palace Ideal Greek Beauty Aller au contenu Health pass In accordance with government recommendations, all visitors to the Louvre aged 12 years and two months or older must show a Health Pass. Aphrodite or Amphitrite? The Venus de Milo. The Galerie des Antiques The Venus de Milo can be admired today in the last of a long series of rooms where she stands in almost solitary splendour. Make way for the goddess! To sum up! Greek sculpture masterpieces.
Aphrodite, known as the 'Venus of Arles'. Female head of the 'Aphrodite of Knidos' type, known as the 'Kaufmann Head'. This attribution would have placed the piece in the Classical period 5th through 4th centuries BCE , which was more respected artistically than the Hellenistic period.
To save face and better promote Venus de Milo —even at the cost of misinforming the public—the plinth was removed before it was presented to the King. During his conquests, Napoleon Bonaparte had plundered one of the finest examples of Greek sculpture, Venus de' Medici, from Italy. In , the French government returned that beloved sculpture, but in , France embraced the chance to fill the hole its absence left in the French culture and national pride.
As such, Venus de Milo was promoted as being even greater than Venus de' Medici upon her Louvre debut. The ploy worked, and the piece was met with almost universal praise from artists and critics. Perhaps the most famous of Venus de Milo 's detractors, the celebrated Impressionist painter dismissed this delicate depiction of grace and female beauty as "a big gendarme.
Venus is missing more than just her arms. She was originally draped in jewelry including a bracelet, earrings and a headband. These flourishes are long lost, but the holes for fixing them to the piece remain in the marble, giving clues to the missing accessories.
However, no trace of the original paint scheme remains on Venus de Milo today. Even with her slight slouch, Venus de Milo stands at 6 feet 8 inches tall. Art historians have noted that Venus de Milo bears a striking resemblance to Aphrodite of Capua , which is a Roman era copy of a possibly late 4th century BCE bronze Greek original.
That would be at least years before Alexandros carved his goddess, leading some to speculate thatboth statues are actually replicas of an older statue. The missing arms of Venus de Milo have been so much more than the source of numerous art historian lectures, debates, and essays.
Their absence has also been an accidental invitation to the world to imagine how they might be positioned, what they might hold, and who this would make her. Unexpectedly, her missing arms are what lend the statue her beauty. In , The Guardian 's Jonathan Jones explained the piece's appeal thusly, "The Venus de Milo is an accidental surrealist masterpiece. An ensign in the French navy, Olivier Voutier, whose ship was anchored in the harbor at Melos, decided to kill time one day by going ashore and searching for antiquities.
Upon investigating, Voutier learned the farmer had located the top half of a statue of a woman. Voutier told his superiors about the discovery and the French acquired the artwork, which came to be known as the Venus de Milo, for a relatively modest sum. The Louvre initially promoted the Venus de Milo as a masterpiece from the Greek classical era. Now, however, the Venus de Milo is thought to have been produced around B.
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