The Venus de Milo is shrouded in mystery – is it Aphrodite or another goddess? Who is its author?… So many enigmas that have made people talk about it and made it an icon. And it's not the Mona Lisa who will contradict us ! For more than two hundred years it has intrigued – as much as it fascinated – visitors to the Louvre Museum.
Its discovery alone is romantic.
On April 8, 1820, in Milo (or Mélos in Greek), an island in the Cyclades in the Aegean Sea, Olivier Voutier, a student in the French navy, disembarked from the Estafette and learned that Yorgos Kentrotas, a Greek farmer, had just unearthed an underground chamber. Surprise ! There lies a statue of a woman in a puzzle
The news reached the ears of the Marquis de Rivière, French ambassador to Constantinople, and the latter dispatched his secretary, the Viscount of Marcellus to buy the Venus . The latter was offered in 1821 to King Louis XVIII, who entrusted it to the Louvre. Just over two meters high, this goddess of the finest marble of Paros, translucent white, impresses with her beauty.
But it is broken! His left foot is missing. And his arms? Where are they ? We do not know. If they existed, they were never found. The reason for this?
The Venus de Milo was executed according to "the technique of the parts added", teaches us Ludovic Laugier, curator of the heritage of the department of Greek, Etruscan and Roman Antiquities of the Louvre museum, in What does it have therefore this Venus de Milo ( ed. Actes Sud Junior / Louvre Museum, 2021 ). “To assemble the different parts of a statue together, says the curator, there is no cement or mortar: they were adjusted very precisely and held together thanks to fixing tenons placed in cavities called mortises. »
It is therefore believed that the missing arms of the Venus had been carved separately. Moreover, on the left, a mortise is still visible at the level of the shoulder. On the right, on the side of the statue, another hole had also been dug and then filled in the 19th century . But there again we are not sure of anything!
Seen in Beaux-Arts magazine
Article by Malika Bauwens
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