today's episode of the history guy
brought to you by Magellan TV it was
April 8th 1920 and Jurgis control toss
was digging among some Roman ruins on
the Greek island of Melos in the Aegean
Sea north of the Sea of Crete control
toss was not an archaeologist he wasn't
digging for treasure Contreras was a
peasant who was digging for bricks
because even though those bricks were
ancient he could still use them to build
walls on his farm but that day he found
something more than a brick in fact he
found what would become one of the most
famous pieces of art in the world
the story of the armless Beauty the
Venus de Milo and how she became so
famous is history
that deserves to be remembered but
before we get around to heating up Greek
Ark and the Aegean Sea I'd like to take
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free Melo's is a small approximately
hundred sixty square kilometer island in
the Aegean Sea part of the Aegean
archipelago Milo's is the southwest most
Island of the Cyclades chain human
habitation on the island goes back to
prehistory is the island was a major
source of volcanic obsidian there were
settlements by fishermen during the
Bronze Age and then by adrienne's the
same ethnic group as the Spartans in the
1st millennium BC the settlement was
ravaged by siege during the
Peloponnesian War
the longer macedonian control during the
Corinthian war and then to the romans
after the macedonian king philip v was
forced to flee greece during the first
macedonian war the island was taken by
crusaders ravaged by pirates and with
the exception of a brief occupation by
the russian empire in the 1770s was
under Ottoman rule from 1556 to 1830
suffice it to say the picturesque island
whose population never exceeded more
than a few thousands as quite an
archaeological record in 1820 Milo's was
under the Ottoman Empire though the
population was almost exclusively Greek
and Christian and the French always had
good relations with the Ottoman Empire
and so it turns out that the day that
mr. Kent wrote ops was digging there
happened to be a French naval officer
nearby the exact details are somewhat
sketchy is there are various accounts
that contradict each other in some
details but the story goes a French
schooner named es de fรชte who was docked
on Milla's on board was a 23 year old
French naval officer named Olivier
BuChE BuChE was interested in Greek
history and so on the visit decided to
go to seek Greek artifacts at the time
there was little protection for
antiquities he took two sailors and a
pick and a shovel and with searching for
and discovering small finds in a Roman
ruin with mr. control tous working
nearby booty a notice that Kant wrote us
stopped working and was looking at
something curious he went to look and
saw that the man had uncovered a fine
marble statue some accounts have mr.
control toss trying to hide the statue
afraid that the Frenchman would take it
others in the Frenchman either paid him
to dig it up or help them dig up
themselves what they found was a
sculpture of a woman at 6 foot 8 inches
tall
was slightly larger than life sculpture
was carved from Parisian marble which is
a particularly fine-grained
semi-translucent
pure white and entirely flawless marble
that was highly prized by sculptors in
the Greek classical era the statue was
in tune made pieces with a nude upper
torso and drape lower legs the two
pieces were fitted in a way common of
Greek sculpture parts of a plinth with a
partial inscription and then arm holding
an apple were also found nearby the
sculpture had evident damage but was
still recognizable as being a
particularly high quality there are
conflicting accounts of exactly where
the sculpture was hidden but it appears
to have been in some sort of niche the
exact location of the fine is not
remembered precisely although there is a
spot marked by a sign on the island
acquiring the sculpture was not a simple
process but she did not try to take the
statue from control toss but did
ascertain that he was willing to sell it
kento toss reportedly placed it in his
goat barn for safekeeping
boaty had no means to quite a statue but
pass the word around and it reached
another French officer Jules Dumont
d'Urville d'Urville was a classicist and
recognized the statues potential
importance but his ship could not carry
a statue that size utilizing his
connections d'Urville contacted the
French ambassador to the Ottoman Court
and convinced him to purchase the statue
but the French nearly missed their
chance as Kent rotas sold the work to a
local priest who intended to send it to
Constantinople as a gift to a member of
the Ottoman Court d'Urville arrived in
time to convince the local governors to
sell the sculpture to him for his
efforts he was both knighted and
promoted it might seem odd that a naval
officer received a promotion for
acquiring a statue but you have to
understand the story of the venus de
milo is not just about as ancient
origins but also very much about the
politics of the time in which it was
discovered the French had just lost the
Napoleonic Wars five years earlier and
they were seeking to regain their
standing in Europe the discovery and
display of ancient artifacts was a
measure of an empires culture and its
reach and on that count the French were
suffering 22 years earlier Napoleon had
invaded Egypt and had taken with him on
the expedition the number of experts on
ancient art a year later French soldiers
discovered an inscription covered slab
of rare value the slab was inscribed
with a decree in the time of Ptolemy v
epiphanies in three scripts ancient
Egyptian hieroglyphs later Egyptian
demotic and ancient Greek the stone
found near the Egyptian port city of
Rosetta who was key to deciphering
hieroglyphics and so was an
extraordinary archaeological value who
had been quite a coup for the French
prestige but Napoleon's armies were
eventually defeated in Egypt and despite
attempts by the French to retain the
find the British had made the Rosetta
Stone a part of their surrender terms
perhaps the greatest ancient discovery
ever made by the French has resided
since 1802 in the British Museum also in
the British Museum but the so-called
Elgin marbles between 1801 and 1812
agents of Thomas Bruges the seventh Earl
of Elgin removed a number of marble
sculptures from the sixth century BC
temple of the Parthenon and other
locations from the Acropolis of Athens
there was controversy in their
acquisition although Elgin then the
ambassador extraordinary and Minister
Plenipotentiary of his Britannic majesty
to the sublime port of Salim the third
Sultan of Turkey claimed to have had
permission to take the works and
asserted that he was rescuing pieces
that have been damaged in explosion
during the great Turkish war in fact he
claims many were being used for building
materials or burned for lime Elgin was
however unable to produce the original
document that supposedly gave him
permission to take the marbles and to
this day their arguments that they were
not so much legally acquired as looted
but such quibbles meant little to
empires in the 19th century the works
were heavily degraded but a burgeoning
European interest in classical Greeks
caused increased interest in them an
1818 Elgin eager to settle debts after a
costly divorce sold the marbles to the
British Museum
where they still reside today it's
rumored that at one point
I offered to buy them but Elgin refused
the offer and so some of the greatest
examples of classical Greek art again
resided in the British Museum
and there was the Venus de Medici the
marble sculpture was made in the first
century BC it's a copy of a much earlier
bronze made during the Greek Classical
period the nude was discovered in Rome
in 1566 and was purchased by Fernando de
Medici in 1575 thus driving its name the
sculpture is significant in that it
represented a change in Greek artistic
sensibilities previously the Greeks were
famous for naturalistic nude sculptures
but there were sculptures of men there
noting heroism and strength the original
sculpture representing Venus or
Aphrodite the ancient Greek goddess of
love beauty pleasure and procreation was
seen as a key landmark in the
development of Greek art in the first
century BC version was the only ancient
representation as the original bronze
was lost it was also significant and
that was done in the proxy Tilian
tradition that is it represented the
works of Praxiteles
the greatest of the classical Greek
sculptors a sculpture of Venus in the
proxy Chilean tradition thus represented
the Western European ideal of beauty
that was recognized by then general
napoleon bonaparte when we first saw the
sculpture in florence in 1796 he is
reported to have remarked that should
Tuscany and France ever go to war he
would take that Venus de Medici to Paris
in 1800 when France invaded Tuscany
during the war of the second coalition
Napoleon kept his promise despite
attempts to prevent Napoleon taking the
statue he finally having won the war
bought the piece by decree the Venus de
Medici was taken to Paris in 1803 and
displayed in the Louvre that had
symbolic significance at the time in
Europe classical Greece was seen to be
the height of human culture and a
sculpture of Aphrodite and the prax
Italian tradition was there for the
objective measure of beauty and because
France owned it was able to display that
piece it meant that France represented
Beauty herself
that is until 1815 when Napoleon was
defeated at Waterloo and they were
forced to give the statue back and so
its reputation tarnished by Napoleon's
defeat France was in essence in need of
a really nice piece of art to prove that
France still represented beauty when
Monsieur Derval saw the sculpture on
Melo's he recognized what a pretty Greek
nude meant to France in saving the
sculpture from a Greek priest he had
saved his country's reputation and was
made a Chevalier in the Legion of Honor
in return assuming the sculpture must be
of Venus the curators at the Louvre
called the piece the Venus de Milo
although coming from the Greek era she
would have been known as Aphrodite
rather than Venus the experts could not
decide how her arms would have been
placed and so decided to display her
with them still missing rather than try
to reconstruct them a choice that seems
to have contributed to the sculptures
mystique and made it all the more
recognizable but the assumption was that
she was holding an apple although there
is disagreement about whether she was
contemplating the Apple or just looking
off into the distance the apple
represents the mythological judgment of
Paris of Troy who was asked by Zeus to
name the most beautiful of the goddesses
Hera Athena or Aphrodite
he chose Aphrodite in an exchange she
gave him the love of any mortal woman he
chose Helen of Sparta and the choice
launched the Trojan War the Apple would
have had extra meaning on Melo's as the
name Melo's sounds very like the Greek
word for Apple Mila and apples were
portrayed on ancient coinage on the
island the politics of the time would
have significant ramifications both for
art and culture when the sculpture was
received by the Louvre where the skull
was quickly decided that the piece of
arm and the Stella that had been
recovered could not have been part of
the original peaks and that the
sculpture which had indentations built
in to indicate that it once been adorned
with jewelry could only be a piece from
the Classical era and the sculptor must
have been Praxiteles himself the French
art world dutifully agreed that the work
was greater even than the Venus de
Medici and represented the very ideal of
beauty herself France was restored the
rim
the piece was driven by a massive
propaganda effort and the sculpture
became and still is today one of the
most popular exhibits in the museum
today the venus de milo is one of the
most recognized pieces of sculpture on
earth probably the most recognized piece
of ancient greek sculpture she's
inspired hundreds of other artists
including of course Salvador Dali's
famous venus de milo with drawers she is
such a major beauty that she used to
adorn the seal of the American Society
of Plastic Surgeons her fame was well
demonstrated when she was sent on loan
to Japan in 1964 and a hundred thousand
people showed up just to watch her ship
arrive more than one and a half million
stood in line to see her on display and
it was all a fraud when she came to the
Louvre she came with a piece of arm and
immediately the curators at the Louvre
said that the arm was more rough-hewn
and could not been a part of the
original sculpture but actually because
of the height of the sculpture in the
placement of the arm you wouldn't be
able to see it well and the arm was
probably original it was common for
Greek sculptors to put less effort into
pieces that couldn't be well inspected
it also came over with a base that
likewise was determined to not possibly
been part of the original sculpture
partly because the inscription on the
basic acid that this sculpture didn't go
all the way back to the Greek classical
era but came from the much later
Hellenistic period today most art
historians agree that based both on the
artistry and the inscription of the work
the Venus de Milo was not the sixth
century BC work of Praxiteles but a
first century BC work of the
lesser-known Alexandros of Antioch in
fact many now think the sculpture is not
even the sculpture of Aphrodite at all
but of m40 t goddess of the sea and wife
of Poseidon those original decisions by
the curators at the Louvre prevented
accurate identification of this
sculpture for more than a century and by
the time they were revealed while the
armless beauty was famous around the
world the Venus de Milo is proof that
art is more than just subjective beauty
it is a factor of history and in
politics more than 2,000 years after she
is carved we find that
art and our concept of beauty itself is
not just in what we see but in how we
can reimagine it into what we need it to
be I hope you enjoyed this episode of
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