A Broken-Arm Beauty (Part 2)
The Owl
Vol. 2,
Issue 15
April 17, 2008
Baltimore,
Maryland
Dear Inquiring Traveler,
We learned last week that the Venus de Milo was brought to Paris in a highly charged nationalistic context played out between the great European powers. The French needed a classical Greek statue that would measure up to England’s Elgin Marbles and the Vatican’s Apollo Belvedere.
Today, we uncover the real story behind the Venus, a truth long buried in the storage rooms of the Louvre.Best regards,
Editor,
The Owl
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The Hand Holding an Apple
by Catherine Lapp
What exactly was found on that spring day in 1820 on the Greek island of Melos? Far more than what meets your eye today at the Louvre. In addition to the bust and draped legs of a female figure, a hand holding an apple was pulled out of the ground as well as a damaged arm and two herms (two pillars topped with a man’s head).
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The hand holding an apple provides an important clue to the identity of the statue. It represents the Greek goddess Aphrodite (known to the Romans as Venus) receiving an apple from the Trojan prince Paris. The story goes that Aphrodite, Athena, and Hera were arguing over who was the most beautiful goddess. They asked Paris, deemed the most handsome mortal man, to be the judge, each promising a different reward if she won the contest.
Athena, the goddess of war, pledged military victory. Hera, wife of the king of the gods Zeus, promised rule over Asia. But Aphrodite knew better how to bribe a handsome prince: she would give him the love of the most beautiful woman on earth, Helen of Sparta. Aphrodite won the contest and its prize: the apple. Paris took Helen away from her Greek husband, King Menelaus of Sparta, and so began the Trojan War.
There couldn’t be a more appropriate subject for a statue decorating a gymnasium on Melos than Aphrodite holding the apple of her victory. The very name of the island means “apple” in Greek, as its roughly rounded shape reminded the ancients of the fruit. The apple became the symbol of Melos and was depicted on its coins.
But the hand holding the apple was never shown to the visitors of the Louvre. Nor were any of the other pieces discovered with the Venus. Why? Because one of those marble pieces was too embarrassing to the Louvre authorities.An Inconvenient Inscription
One of the human-head pillars discovered with the statue possessed an uncomfortable truth. The pillar itself posed little problem to the antiquities-fanatics of the 19th century. But the base of the pillar did. It was engraved with a few words revealing the name of the sculptor.
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The name was neither Phidias nor Praxiteles. It was a certain Alexander of Antioch, an entirely unknown sculptor.
But the lack of fame of this sculptor was not the only inconvenient truth. The city of origin of Alexander -- Antioch in western Turkey -- was founded in Hellenistic times toward the end of the 3rd century BC. In other words, the Venus de Milo was created two centuries after Greece’s Classical Age. To 19th-century antiquarians, the statue thus belonged to the decadent age of Greek art. The Venus was no match for the Elgin Marbles, and the curator of the Louvre was knowledgeable enough to anticipate this tragic situation immediately.
His solution? He removed the base from the statue, hid it, and probably destroyed it. Nobody has seen the inscription since. Without the revealing signature, the Venus de Milo could be marketed as a classical masterpiece—and the few, Germans as well French, who dared contest its antiquity were deprived of their main proof.
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A Distinguished Family One of the main opponents of the Venus’ classical origin who advocated a later date for her creation was the 19th-century German art historian Adolf Furtwängler. The name may sound familiar to you, even if you are not versed in archaeology. Adolf is the father of the famous conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler, known for his forceful conducting of Beethoven, Brahms, Wagner, Bruckner, and, in my opinion, of a memorable recording of Mozart’s Don Giovanni. |
A Gradual Acceptance of Her Age
But the Louvre couldn’t keep this embarrassing secret forever. There is a drawing of the inscription made shortly after the discovery that not only confirms the name of the artist, but shows that the signature fits perfectly in the broken base of the statue of Venus.
What’s more, art historians have greatly refined their perception of ancient art and are now able to attribute the Venus to the Hellenistic period, with or without the inscription. The most obvious hint that it belongs to this period is the realism with which the torso is sculpted: the wide hips are quite different from the idealized female representations of classical Greece. And the drapery wrapped around the legs was very popular in Hellenistic times.
Even the artist, Alexander of Antioch, who was unknown just one hundred years ago, has been identified in recent years as a singer and music composer who lived around 80 BC. The Venus is decidedly much later than its discoverer ever wanted to believe, and we can no longer believe otherwise.
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