The Replacement Venus

Yorgos Kentrotas, a poor Greek peasant, was just digging at the ruins of the old city wall in hopes of finding a few bricks to use to wall off his garden.  That the bricks might be two millennia old was immaterial, as there have been few technological improvements in the brick industry.

 

Kentrotas dug along the base of the wall and discovered a niche about four feet wide and five feet deep.  Though the niche was filled with debris, he could see part of a covered marble statue.  His fascination with the buried object caught the eye of a nearby French naval officer, who, along with a pair of sailors, were digging among the ruins in search of artifacts.

 

What Kentrotas had discovered was the top half of a nude statue of a woman that was destined to become one of the most famous pieces of art in the world, the Venus de Milo.

At the urging of the French naval officer, Kentrotas kept digging, eventually discovering the bottom half of the statue, along with pieces of the left arm, a hand and a plinth.  After reporting the find, a higher-ranking French naval officer convinced the French ambassador at the Ottoman Court to purchase the statue. (Milos was in Turkish territory at the time.)

 

Finally, a French naval vessel carefully conveyed the statue to France.  After being officially presented to King Louis XVIII, the statue made its way to the Louvre.  (The statue arrived in France in 1821, but the King was having a small problem with obesity—it actually took him over a year to make the trip to the museum to see it.)

 

With the exceptions of a few wars, a minor revolution, and a tour to Japan—where over 100,000 people turned out just to watch the boat carrying the statue dock, the big lady (she is 6’ 8” and 1,500 pounds) has remained in the museum for almost two hundred years.

 

The Statue was restored without the plinth and pieces of the left arm, and immediately caused a sensation as the only surviving female statue created by Praxiteles, the master classical 6th century BCE Greek sculptor.  As the premiere example of beauty as defined by Classical Greek culture, The Venus de Milo as the objective measure of beauty was the embodiment of all the French Empire was and hoped to be.

 

Of course, in reality, the story is almost all bullshit.

 

France faked almost all of this.  Exactly who found the statue and where will probably never be completely settled, but it probably was a member of the Kentrotas family who first discovered the statue at Milos, and this was probably while he was looking for marble to sell, either as an artifact, or to be burnt to make limestone.

 

France desperately needed a new classical female statue, so it created the myth of the Venus de Milo to satisfy that need.  At the time, western countries considered the classical world to be the embodiment of sophistication and enlightenment.  A nation’s accumulation of great art was a measure of the country’s wealth and the embodiment of an empire’s reach.  In a very real sense, Europeans believed that if a nation possessed works of beauty, the country itself was beautiful.

 

Until very recently, the Louvre had displayed not only the great art of the Western World, but the most famous example of female beauty in existence—the Venus de Medici (left).  (Which, if you haven’t heard of it, shows you the power of French propaganda.)

The Venus de Medici was a 1^st century BCE Greek statue believed to be a copy of an earlier statue by Praxiteles.  Formerly a possession of the Medici family, it had been “forcibly acquired” by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1803.  (And yes, I managed to work Napoleon into another blog post.)

 

The Venus was only part of the art work Napoleon had looted from across Europe, but she was one of the most important pieces in the Louvre.  However, following Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo in 1815, most of the works the Emperor had stolen were returned to their original countries.  The Venus de Medici was returned to Italy and is now in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. 

 

Not only was France forced to return the looted art, but in the contest among nations to see which could acquire the most riches from the world, France was losing to Great Britain.  Spain, grateful for England’s assistance in her war with Napoleon had gifted that nation with many works, such as the Rokeby Nude by Velasquez.  England had also acquired the Elgin Marbles from the Parthenon, as well as the Rosetta Stone.  (The last had been briefly the property of Napoleon, but the priceless artifact was specifically listed as part of the surrender terms of The Capitulation of Alexandria).

 

Since France had spent years touting their possession of the Venus de Medici, the yardstick by which all beauty was to be judged…. France needed a replacement Venus.  Preferably one what was better, older, more prestigious, and one that could—with the proper publicity—be recognized as even more beautiful.

 

So, in 1821, when the Louvre displayed the statue, the French fudged a little.  First off, she probably should not be called the “Venus de Milo”, since the statue probably is a depiction of Amphitrite, the wife of Poseidon, and the town of Milos is now called Trypiti.  (I guess the Amphitrite of Trypiti doesn’t have the same marketing appeal.)

 

Regretfully, the statue wasn’t created by Praxiteles, either.  The Louvre knew full well that the plinth—which was not put on display—indicated that the statue was created 500 years after the death of Praxiteles by Alexandros of Antioch.  To this day, the Louvre claims that the fate of that portion of the plinth (as well as the fate of the hand) is unknown.

Alas, the credibility of the museum sunk further because an art student had created detailed drawings of the statue, including the plinth.  Slowly, his drawings and other details about the statue leaked out to the art world. 

 

The ruse lasted until 1893, when a German publication, which included the student’s drawings, accurately dated the statue.  The truth did little to diminish the “stature” of the Venus—at least in the minds of the public (and not just her French fans).  To her public, she is the most famous statue in the world.  To the crowds that flock to the Louvre annually, she is only slightly less popular than the Mona Lisa.