Venus de Milo (a statue of Venus, the goddess of love and beauty) was almost lost forever. In 1820 a man passing a lime kiln on the Greek island of Milos noticed the statue lying on the ground about to be broken up and burned into lime.
The owner saw no beauty in the old statue and parted with her readily. Eventually the Venus de Milo was placed in the Louvre in Paris, where it is one of the museum’s most valuable treasures.
The Venus de Milo is larger than life and is made in two parts, which join together unnoticed at the clothing line.
She stands gracefully, looking calm and quiet and seemingly unaware that people are looking at her.
Like most Greek statues – but unlike most Greeks – Venus de Milo has a Greek nose, a nose that extends in a straight line down from the forehead. The Greeks, who tried to make their statues as beautiful as possible, thought this type of nose was particularly attractive.
Nobody knows who sculpted the Venus de Milo – though some think she may have been carved by a student of the great sculptor Praxiteles – and nobody is really certain that it is a statue of Venus, though most people think so.
Many art scholars have also wondered what she was originally doing with her arms, which have never been found. Some think she held a bronze shield on her knee and was looking at her reflection in its polished surface. Others think she held a lance, and others that she held nothing at all.
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