Return to Venus de Milo
Part of the original plinth on which the Venus de Milo stood was lost soon after it arrived at the Louvre in 1821. Its appearance can be discerned, however, from a sketch made that year by Auguste Debay that was used to illustrate a paper by the Comte de Clarac, in which he insisted that the statue was the work of Alexandros of Antioch. One can see that, when the drawing was made, the fragment of the upper left arm found at the site already had been tentatively restored. The right arm, which had been sculpted separately, was supported by a dowel below the right breast and joined somewhere just below the breakage point. (The original drawing by Debay is not as refined as the reproduction above, which presents a more muscular Venus and adds a dotted line across the hips to indicate where the two blocks of marble were joined.)
These are the first sketches of the Venus de Milo, drawn at the find site by Voutier when it first was discovered. Notice that the statue has been sculpted in two pieces and that a section of the right hip is missing. This soon was found and, when slid between the two larger blocks, permitted the statue to be seen by Voutier essentially as it now. The two herms found at the time also are illustrated, both sitting on their bases, the inscriptions of which were drawn clearly enough to be read. The beardless head on the fractured base represents Hercules; the bearded one, Hermes, both of whom were patrons of the gymnasium. Their identity can be ascertained from an inscription that surmounted the entrance of the niche where the Venus had been found. The dedication of the exedra and statue to Hermes and Hercules had been transcribed by D'Urville and copied by Clarac at the Louvre before this stone, too, was lost. The letterforms of both the dedication and the missing base suggest a date c.150-50 BC.
(Voutier had copied the inscription on the base of the bearded Hermes incorrectly, repeating two of the letters. The mistake was realized only when a statue of Poseidon, very similar to the Venus and possibly by the same sculptor, was found on Melos in 1877 together with several others, one of which was inscribed "Theodoridas son of Laistratos to Poseidon." Then, in 1900, almost eighty years after the base of the Hermes had arrived at the Louvre, it was rediscovered and found to fit perfectly with the herm. Both the Hermes and the Poseidon had been dedicated by the same person.)
In self-imposed exiled after the restoration of the king, Jacques-Louis David was France's pre-eminent neoclassicist. He was intrigued by the Louvre's new acquisition and asked that a drawing be sent. The request was made to a former student who then was the curator in charge of antique restorations at the museum, who charged his young son Auguste Debay with the task. The drawing (right) was rendered when the two fragments of the base still were fitted together. A tracing was sent to David and the original retained by the boy's father, to be used later by Clarac and of which Forbin apparently was completely unaware.
This illustration from Furtwängler provides a different perspective of the fractured plinth. One can better see that the left foot, which was sculpted separately, rested on the higher inscribed plinth and projected beyond it. One can barely discern the socket hole where it was attached. A lost wedge-shaped slab, which would make the front of the plinth square with its other sides is indicated by dotted lines and may be why the artist confined his inscription to the lost portion of the base.
The photograph shows the base of the Venus as it now appears.
Furtwängler believed that the inscribed base belonged to the statue of Venus; indeed, its disappearance was "only a proof of its genuineness," as it demonstrated the statue to be a Hellenistic work rather than by Praxiteles. Given the square hole in the plinth, he reconstructed the figure with the left arm resting on a pillar or stele, the hand holding out an apple in its upturned palm. Here, the arm is presented as being bent forward and not upward, as shown in Debay's drawing.
Even though fragments of such a column were never found and Voutier's drawing clearly shows that the herm of Hercules stood within an inscribed base, its placement next to the Venus was, for Furtwängler, an aesthetic impossibility. "The artistic effect produced by a conjunction of statue and term is distinctly unpleasing....It would moreover be not only a hideous but an unparalleled device to place a term as support to a figure with which it had no definite connexion." And so the arm of the Venus is presented as supported by a simple column and not the herm.
To be sure, the Venus standing next to an undistinguished herm of Hercules less than half its size does seem an awkward composition. But this must have been exactly its appearance. It is a salutary reminder that ancient and modern aesthetics are not necessarily the same.
Rather than "herm" (from Hermes), Furtwängler uses the more antiquated word "term," which the Oxford English Dictionary defines as a statue or bust like that of the god Terminus, in which only the upper part of the body is represented, terminating below in a pillar or pedestal that bears the figure. Here, displayed with additional fragments that were found at the site, including the left hand holding an apple, is the herm of Hercules (middle), which is missing its base.
References: Disarmed: The Story of the Venus de Milo (2003) by Gregory Curtis; Masterpieces of Greek Sculpture (1895) by Adolf Furtwängler and edited by Eugénie Sellers.
Return to Top of Page