![]() ![]() Since the famous Louvre Museum in Paris wanted to make up for the famous Italian sculptures that had been forced returned to Italy, they gave the statue the Roman name Venus, the Roman goddess of beauty. The answer can be found in the hands of Venus de Milo, which are unfortunately no longer in existence. The statue was unearthed on the island of Milos, hence the name “de Milo,” which translates to “of Milos.” The real mystery lies in determining if the statue represents Venus or not. The question “Who is Venus de Milo?” has a relatively easy answer, but the real story behind the statue sometimes referred to as “the goddess without arms” is much more complicated. The Identity and Meaning of Venus de Milo What else is known about the Venus de Milo? And how did the statue lose its arms?īelow, WHE unravels the mystery surrounding the marble statue’s origin and discovery. There are some scholars that believe that the figure of the statue is rather a depiction of Amphitrite, the Greek goddess of the sea. the Graeco-Egyptian period).Ĭreated sometime between 150 and 125 BC, the Venus de Milo is universally recognized as one of the greatest works of art ever created. The Aphrodite of Milos, often called Venus de Milo or just the Venus statue, is one example of such amazing works created during the Hellenistic period (i.e. Sculpture is the primary medium through which these artists’ legacies have survived. The ancient Greeks laid the groundwork for the creative technique we know today through their detailed anatomical studies and naturalistic representations of the human form. Who cares what her arms were doing? It is their absence that makes the Venus de Milo a modern enigma.Created sometime between 150 and 125 BC, the Venus de Milo is universally recognized as one of the greatest works of art ever created. The accidents of archeology have turned this ancient statue into a masterpiece of the uncanny. After the first world war, the dadaists and surrealists chopped up images of statues in such works as Max Ernst’s collage novel The Hundred Headless Woman. Greek myths became images of the psyche in Sigmund Freud’s interpretations of dreams. The classical world was imagined as an eerie sepulchre of beauty in Arnold Bocklin’s painting The Isle of the Dead. The armless Venus de Milo entered European culture in the 19th century just as artists and writers were rejecting the perfect and timeless. Who wants perfection? Who worships straight-lined classical reason? It was admired two hundred years ago as an image of the absolute rational clarity of Greek civilisation and the perfect harmony of divine beauty. That boring masterpiece has both its arms and is perfect in every way. In the 18th century, aristocrats and artists took their Grand Tours to Rome to revere the Apollo Belvedere in the Vatican Museum. This statue embodies – literally - the modern world’s ambivalence towards classical beauty. Dali saw the armless Greek goddess as a ready-made surrealist object straight out of a dream. ![]() In 1936, Salvador Dali made a copy of the Venus de Milo with drawers inserted in it, so it could be used as a piece of furniture. That sense of enigmatic incompleteness has transformed an ancient work of art into a modern one. She is perfect but imperfect, beautiful but broken – the body as a ruin. Her lack of arms makes her strange and dreamlike. The Venus de Milo is an accidental surrealist masterpiece. Why, two centuries after its discovery, does this sculpture still fascinate? ![]() The interesting question is why we want to talk about the arms at all. Accidental surrealist masterpiece: the Venus de Milo at the Louvre, Paris. ![]()
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