Venus' broken arm was discovered by a local farmer named Jurgos in a cave on Milos Island in the Aegean Sea of Greece in 1820. Jurgos first discovered a small collapsed temple. There is a statue of a beautiful woman in the sand of the temple. He dug up the statue carefully and found that she had lost two arms. Because it was found on the island of Milos, it is also called "Venus of Milos".
When Jurgos discovered Venus, he moved her home. On April 18 this year, it happened that Wu Tieer, an intern officer of the French navy, was inspecting hydrology in Miro Island. He saw Venus and decided to buy it from Jurgos and ship it back to France. After bargaining, the deal was finally settled, but Woodier couldn't come up with thousands of silver dollars at once, so he had to pay Jurgos a deposit of one hundred silver dollars first, and then went to the French consul in Miro Island and asked him to raise money to buy the statue. However, the consuls were not interested in this matter, so they asked their superiors for instructions and sent Woodier away. Unwilling to give up, Woody used his warship to go to Constantinople, Turkey, to find Marquis Riel, the French ambassador to Turkey. After listening to Woody's statement, Marquis decided to send embassy staff to allow Woody to go to Miro Island to handle the transaction procedures of Venus statue. At this time, Britain also got wind of it and sent warships to Miro Island, hoping to buy the statue first. When British and French warships came to Miro Island one after another, the situation suddenly changed. In the meantime, Jurgos has sold the statue to a local priest at a low price. The priest intends to dedicate it to the translation of the governor of Constantinople. Just as the priest was about to ship the statue, Woody Emmanuel and others just arrived. Woody Emmanuel negotiated with the priest, but the priest flatly refused, so the two sides fought fiercely. The lawsuit finally hit the Milo authorities, who sold the statue to the French for 80 thousand silver coins. When France got this image, the whole country suddenly boiled, people regarded it as a national treasure, and some people were so excited that they shed tears while enjoying it. Now the statue is treasured in the Louvre in France. The Louvre regards this statue as the treasure of the town hall and has a special room to store the beauty of the goddess. It attracts tourists from all over the world. Today, people who respect art in all countries feel it is a great blessing to witness this Venus with their own eyes.
When unearthed, the waist of the statue had been broken. After the restoration, archaeologists first verified the BC 1 century period. Because the expressions and postures of female images are similar to Palaio Tellez's style, and the proportion is close to Lacypus' standard, it has caused controversy. Finally, the original inscription was found under the pedestal and feet of the female statue, which read: "alexandros of Antwerp made this". Judging from the style of the inscription, it should be a work around BC 100. So some people opposed its inclusion during the Hellenistic period. However, judging from the overall style of the statue, the oval face, straight nose (commonly known as Greek nose), flat forehead, straight arched eyebrows, almond-shaped eyes, and the bun carved into an orderly light ripple style are all idealistic traditions inherited from the late 5th century BC, so it is unreasonable not to bring them into the Hellenistic period.
The marble statue of Venus is about 2.4 meters high. It is made of a translucent dolomite and stands on a marble base with a white texture like chicken blood. This is the most beautiful Greek female statue ever discovered. Venus's face has the typical characteristics of Greek women. Straight nose, oval face and narrow forehead. Her confident eyes and smiling lips give the impression that she is reserved and wise, not delicate or shy, and has no affectation. It embodies the aesthetic ideal of the Greeks more than two thousand years ago, the unity of purity and elegance, external beauty and spiritual beauty. Although her posture is solemn, elegant and graceful, the contrast between the trunk, limbs and multiple clothing lines has produced a subtle flow rhythm. Her half-naked posture makes the whole image very attractive. Her legs were covered with expressive folds, only her toes were exposed. Because the lower body is thick and steady, the exposed upper body is more beautiful. She is like a monument, giving people a sense of loftiness, graceful, but beautiful and moving.
The charm and solemnity of "Venus" have always been admired by artists of all ages. No matter what angle the viewer looks at it, he can get this feeling, because most of the nude female statues excavated in ancient Greece focus on expressing the beauty of the senses, and this "Venus" has been raised to the height of classical ideal beauty by the author. The image is full of infinite poetry, and her implicit and intriguing beauty dwarfs almost all human art. One of the reasons may be that the clothes hanging on the lower body show an implicit beauty. Rodin said: "This work expresses the greatest inspiration in ancient times; Her senses are controlled by moderation, and the joyful tone of her life is regulated by reason. " Russian writer Gey Usbinski put it more clearly: "She covered the nude she created in order to prevent the audience from having habitual, trite and evil ideas about the beauty of women."
Half-naked body and half-hanging clothes not only show the beauty of the body, but also cover and control the body. It makes people pay attention to the inner charm of the characters, not just the outer body, which is indeed a superb artistic technique.
The inner charm of Venus in Milo lies in her expression. She changed the shyness of the naked goddess in the past and showed a graceful, quiet and refined expression. There is a faint smile on her face that is almost imperceptible. What we feel from her smile is an otherness. It is this transcendental expression that controls the official pleasure of pure flesh that nudity may bring. She raised people's spiritual world to a new height.
The images of ancient Greek gods were shaped according to the aesthetic proportion of nudity. Although ancient people worshipped God, because sculptors created beautiful images according to the beauty of the human body in real life, almost all parts of these perfect statues contained the golden section of 5∶8.
The ratio of 5: 8 not only belongs to the concept of proportion in the western world, but also experienced Egypt, Greece and later Rome. So far, this concept of proportion is still the aesthetic law of human beings. In the Middle Ages, this ratio was mystified, saying that it was a secret method taught by God to the world, so it was called "the God-given ratio method". By the end of 15, Luke Baciorri, a missionary, was impressed by the mystery of its proportion, so he named it "golden section". The beauty created by the statue of Venus has become the most ideal model of the golden ratio, setting an immortal and glorious model for the art of later generations.
This statue expresses the Greek ideal of beauty and should be a perfect work. Unfortunately, the statue came out without both arms. (When ancient Greek sculptors carved marble statues, the arm and wrist were usually made separately and then assembled, so when they were destroyed, the tenon was often broken first. ) The only fly in the ointment is that. It is said that when she was found on Milos Island, the goddess still held a golden apple in her hand, symbolizing the victory of the beauty contest. But then this hand disappeared. For hundreds of years, many artists have made various guesses and estimates, and put forward many restoration schemes, making up her arms in various postures: some are hanging down with one hand, holding flowers in the other hand, and holding the "friendship ring" in the other, or holding a golden apple in the left hand, leaning against a short column in the left hand, and pulling up the fallen clothes in the right hand, and so on. Although there are many schemes, none of them are satisfactory, so they have to keep the status quo. People rely on imagination to supplement. Surprisingly, although the goddess lost her arms, she still felt intact. The so-called "incomplete beauty".
In retrospect, a perfect work, sometimes after cruel injury, will still arouse people's interest. This is not because people have the instinct of destruction, but because times have changed and people's appreciation has changed. Although Venus of Milo lost her arms, she cut off her excessive connection with history, mythology and literature, and her own charm as a sculpture appeared instead. Without her arms, she is no longer a jealous beauty in myth. She is just a pure and noble woman now. Her posture proves this, the clothes that she slipped down to her chest prove this, and her quiet and sweet smile also proves this. Because of this, she is the real beauty god, which is in the eyes of modern people.