The Mystical Journey of Aphrodite

From the depths of the sea she rose as depicted by Sandro Botticelli and emerged from the depths of the Earth to reach once again her father Uranus.

Aprodite of Milos or else known as Venus de Milo, the Greek goddess of love, beauty and desire was created between 130 and 100 BC by the sculpture Agisandros according to several findings.

The statue was discovered in April 8^th of 1820 in the ancient ruins of Milos in Tripiti by Giorgos Kentrotas, a real estate broker of the time while valuing the land. While digging into the grounds he came across the statue, in fact only half of the statue and he immediately covered it up so as to hide it from the French officials who have started excavations in the area in order to discover ruins from the past. When the second part of the statue was discovered he couldn’t hide it for long and soon two French sailors that were helping with the excavations nearby ran to help dig out the marble. Official Olivier Voutier was also at the setting and due to his archeological studies he understood at once the value of their discovery. He immediately began to sketch the statue and since he couldn’t afford to buy it on his own he contacted several French officials to arrange the purchase. Not knowing its significance it is said that Giorgos Kentrotas finally sold the statue for 400 grosia, an amount equal to a very good annual income of the time.

The statue was broken in 6 pieces as evident in several references but at that time when a statue was sculpted the attention was only given to one side as only one side was meant to be marveled and thus the other side wasn’t created as refined as the rest of the body. For this reason when the broken arms, the inscription of the sculpturer and the base of the statue were found nearby in a clearly poor condition they were considered parts of some other statue of much lesser significance and thus were never claimed. According to these findings Aphrodite was holding the apple of Paris.

The statue was suppose to be transferred with a vessel to France but during these years any antiquity discovered had to be transferred to Constantinople to be evaluated by the Sultan who would then decide who he would favor with this antiquity. In the meantime, Nikolaos Mourouzis from the Ottoman Empire convinced the Melians to sell the statue to him but the French ambassador Vicomte de Marcellus persuaded the Melians not to load the statue on Mourouzis vessel. A great conflict arose along with several combats that concluded with the execution of Mourouzis in 1821 and the transfer of the statue to Louvre, Paris.

Now the statue stands in its own greatness among other masterpieces of the finest artists in the world while an exact replica was gifted by the Louvre to the archeological museum of Milos in Plaka as a sign of gratitude.

Visit the archeological museum of Milos and the earthly grounds where Aphrodite de Milos was laying for centuries and make your own assumptions of this Olympian Goddess.