Mercedes-Benz ad, 1996 (illustration credit 7.3)
These dour opinions can only be in reaction to the statue’s fame, since the descriptions of other Greek statues, even inferior ones, use noticeably milder language. In a sense these opinions don’t matter, since scholarly tastes will change, as they have in the past, while the statue will remain the same. These negative opinions are occasionally based on the presumed superiority of statues of Aphrodite that no longer exist. For instance, R. R. R. Smith says that, “placed beside the original of the Crouching Aphrodite, [the Venus de Milo] would probably have seemed rather dull.” But since neither he nor anyone else in the past two thousand years has seen the original of the Crouching Aphrodite, how could he possibly know?
Feminist art historians tend to look askance at the Venus de Milo as well. For the past thirty years they have usually been concerned with art since the Renaissance. Now they are beginning to look at the classical world. Feminist interpretations of classical art and life have caused a conservative backlash in some classics departments. The conservatives are generally the better writers, but the books and articles on both sides—the lethal salvos in this arcane fight—make entertaining reading once you know a little about the combatants and become inured to the jargon.
Darty ad, 1984 (illustration credit 7.4)
However, the feminist approach strikes me as potentially fruitful. Scholarship about the statue is in a rut. Adolf Furtwängler wrote the last original and convincing interpretation using all the evidence—and that was in 1893!
The problem is that there is so little new information and so little new interpretation. If there is a spectacular archeological find—another statue signed by Alexandros, let’s say—that would certainly tell us more about the Venus de Milo. Unfortunately, such a lucky event is unlikely. That leaves new interpretation as the only road to discovery, and looking at the statue with new eyes is exactly what the feminists are trying to do. As Shelby Brown wrote in an essay titled “ ‘Ways of Seeing’: Women in Antiquity,” “Authors writing on nude classical sculptures, for example, have tended to ignore completely the gender relations implied by the body language, or to point out their titillating aspects without considering in any depth the social construction of modesty for women and voyeurism for men.” Feminist critics are uneasy with the Venus de Milo, the best-known sculpted image of a woman in our culture, because a man created it to be displayed only to other men in a gymnasium. “What does that tell us?” is the question they seek to answer, and answering it adequately will require seeing the statue in ways past scholars never attempted or even imagined. A feminist critic who was backed by solid scholarship and an expert eye and had a mind supple enough to discern whether there is a pattern behind all the subtleties and contradictions could be the next Furtwängler.
WHATEVER opinions modern scholars may have, a visit to the Louvre is enough to show that the Venus de Milo is in no danger of losing its place in the public consciousness. It isn’t just the sheer number of people in the crowds that arrive in her alcove, although that is impressive enough. Most visitors listen to their guide, look at the statue quizzically, pose for a picture in front of her, and then move on. They have had the experience they wanted. But a significant minority linger, walk slowly around the statue, look at it from each angle, and try to extract everything from the moment that they can. They get the experience they want, too. It’s rare to see someone go away disappointed. People accept that the statue is great art, that it has nobility and truth that are unaffected whether she has drawers coming out of her breasts or wears a cowboy hat and shades.
This lofty place in our culture is exactly what the French wanted for the Venus de Milo so that her glory would reflect onto them. As we’ve seen, they actively promoted the statue from the moment of her discovery, and this campaign still creates echoes in French culture many generations later. One recent spring afternoon at the Louvre I listened as a docent brought a group of French schoolgirls, about ten years old, to see the statue. She told them how the Venus was found on Melos and then brought to the Louvre. She pointed out the cracks at the hips and the line in the drapery where the two halves meet and commented on the twists and curves in the body. Then, standing with the girls gathered around her, the docent lowered her voice and said that the Venus had once stood next to a statue of Mars, the god of war. And she assumed the position that both Quatremère and Ravaisson had insisted on for the statue. She extended her left arm as if it were resting on the god’s shoulder and brought her right hand across her stomach as if to touch his arm. She held the pose for a moment, looking at the girls. Then she dropped her arms, raised a finger, and said that the most important thing about the statue is that it is an original. “An original!” she repeated with emphasis. How proud Quatrèmere and Ravaisson would have been of her.
But French propaganda is not the reason why the Venus de Milo has fascinated artists for generations or why great masses of tourists arrive at the Louvre each day to see her. They come because the statue is beautiful in a way that even an untrained eye immediately understands. Its classicism is the source of that instant recognition. Ever since Winckelmann brought Greek art back into our culture, we have thought of Greek idealized nude sculpture as both the beginning of Western art and an achievement that has not been surpassed in the two and a half millennia since. There can be only one convenient public symbol of this achievement—two or more would just confuse things. The Venus de Milo, beautiful and genuinely Greek, not a Roman copy of some earlier masterpiece, has been that symbol from the moment the statue was first displayed at the Louvre.
Classical though her beauty is, it is far easier to see than it is to describe. Although apparently simple and immediately comprehensible, the statue is actually so complex that Sir Kenneth Clark once remarked: “[The] planes of her body are so large and calm that at first we do not realize the number of angles through which they pass. In architectural terms, she is a baroque composition with classic effect.” He also said the “Aphrodite of Melos makes us think of an elm tree in a field of corn.” I find that last comparison completely baffling, but the large planes and angles are all there to see. We spoke in the last chapter of the conflicting movements to the left in the upper half of the statue and to the right in the lower. These opposing tensions are so strong that they could have made the statue appear to be twisting itself apart. Instead, even more powerful dynamics unify the statue and produce the surprising calm that Clark mentioned.
In the Louvre, it’s possible to see the Venus de Milo from every angle. The pose in contrapposto, with her left knee bent slightly inward while her weight rests on her straight right leg, produces a large, elongated S-curve. It begins at her left shoulder, moves to her right armpit, then runs down across her body to her left knee, where it turns again and runs through the lower drapery before ending at the right foot. This long, lazy curve is intersected by two dramatic Xs. The first X is tall and skinny. One line begins just at the right of her neck and goes down to her missing left foot. The second line begins halfway from her neck to her left shoulder and goes down to her right foot. These two lines cross at her navel. The second X, shorter and wider, crisscrosses her torso. One line begins at the edge of her right shoulder and goes to her left hip. The other begins at her left shoulder and goes to her right hip. These lines meet directly above her navel at the fold across her stomach. The languor of the S combined with the rigid simplicity of the two Xs helps give the statue both her baroque complexity and her classic calm.
The line of her shoulders, tilted slightly downward from left to right, is parallel with the line of the fold of drapery around her hips and also parallel with a line from her missing left foot to her right. These parallel lines serve to unite the statue while their slope to the right is neutralized, even dominated, in part by the twist of her torso but even more by her head. It floats on its long neck as the goddess gazes to the left toward the spot where her missing arm once held the apple.
The flesh
appears so real that one expects it to be warm to the touch. Some of that is due to the translucence of the marble, but mostly it’s the result of the delicate skill Alexandros had with a chisel. One example is the small fold of flesh near the armpit that’s been displaced by the right arm. On a grander scale, the back in particular is an expanse of flesh with small undulations of muscle and a long, narrow, bowed furrow for her spine that runs from the bottom of her neck to the line of her buttocks. This bow is echoed in the curve of her right hip and waist. This is the most sensuous back ever carved in stone. The three tendrils of hair on her neck that have come loose from her bun subtly enhance this eroticism.
When her face is seen from the three-quarter right profile, as the artist intended, it appears regular although, as the German anatomists Henke and Hasse were to discover, it is in fact quite irregular. The eyes are not symmetrical. The mouth and chin are slightly to the right of center of the nose. Even the part in her hair is not centered but somewhat to the left. Her eyes are deep in her head and emphasize the roundness of her cheeks. Her eyebrows and upper eyelids are delicate, although a touch severe, and the ends of her mouth turn down slightly, giving to some viewers an impression of disdain.
The face is the most criticized part of the statue. While disdainful to some, it’s blank or expressionless to others. In fact, her expression is neither disdainful nor blank but completely absorbed. If her arms were intact, we could see that her apple of victory is what draws her attention. She is pondering her own beauty. That accounts for the pride shown in the slight downward turn of her lips. Her absorption turns out to be self-absorption.
But without the arms we can’t see what it is that she contemplates. All we know is that it’s something there to her left but invisible to us. That gives the statue a mystery and depth that would be absent if we knew her thoughts were on herself.
It’s curious how little the arms are missed. Knowing they were there is enough. Their absence doesn’t affect the pleasure in seeing the drapery wrapped around her legs, the elegant twist of her torso, the sexuality that even her back exudes, the quizzical irregularity of her face, the unruly strands of hair on her neck, or the subtle displacement of her flesh by the right arm. More than that, the loss of the arms has actually deepened the statue’s meaning. Goddesses, after all, and especially Aphrodite, are somewhat frivolous. As immortals, they cannot suffer. As objects of adoration, they cannot lose at love. Their hearts cannot break. The missing arms bring the goddess down to earth among us. Here she is vulnerable just as we are, and her frivolity and her self-absorption vanish. She retains our admiration, but now she has our sympathy, too. That sympathy, which connects the viewer with the statue, secures her enduring popularity.
The Venus de Milo proves that great art transcends its time and place, and even the purpose for which it was intended. Whatever Greek society may have assumed about women, one Greek man, Alexandros, created the Venus de Milo, who is a beauty, a mother, a force of nature, a mortal woman contemplating the unknown, and a goddess absorbed in her own beauty. She was that complex and radiant being more than two thousand years ago. Rediscovered, she immediately resumed her role and has maintained it for almost two centuries. During that time the world has changed many times, but she has not. What is beauty? What is a mother, a force of nature, a mortal woman? What is a goddess? While you look at her, the answers seem within reach. Look away and mystery returns.
NOTES
Works cited here in brief are given in full in the Bibliography.
Preface
1. advertisements and kitsch objects, artists, trip to Japan: Salmon.
2. “immense like the sea”: Rodin, 12.
I. From Melos to Paris
1. Alaux, Besnier, and Michon 1900 and 1902 all have detailed accounts of the statue’s discovery, acquisition, and arrival at the Louvre. Michon’s works publish the many original documents he found in the archives of the Louvre, maritime records, and private family papers and give an extensive commentary on them. Marcellus in his two books (1840, 1851) provides the only account of the negotiations that led to the purchase and, except for maritime records and ships’ logs, of the subsequent voyage with the statue in the hold of the Estafette. Some later commentators have claimed that he is self-important at best and prevaricating at worst. I see no reason to think so. He was the one person with the authority and responsibility for acquiring the statue, so he could hardly overemphasize his role. Nothing he writes is contradicted by any other reliable source, and his account of the negotiations is quite plausible. It is not overly intricate, and Marcellus shows himself winning more by determination than by brilliant strokes.
2. description and biography of Voutier: Alaux. Voutier’s own account of the discovery is in Alaux and de Lorris. Voutier wrote many years after the fact, but there is no reason to doubt his truthfulness. Furthermore, his sketches are strong proof of his veracity. They are undoubtedly genuine, for reasons discussed in the text.
3. April 8: This date for the discovery is established by Duval d’Ailly’s letter of April 11 (in Alaux, 175), which speaks of the statue’s being discovered three days earlier.
4. erecting the statue: One does wonder how Voutier and Yorgos managed to reassemble the statue, since the top half must weigh half a ton. Perhaps, in addition to the two sailors, Yorgos’s son and nephew, both of whom later claimed to have been present at the discovery, lent a hand. Yorgos did manage to transport the top half to his cowshed, so erecting the statue would also have been within the ability of whoever was there.
5. “Those who have seen”: de Lorris, 102.
6. “Are you sure”: per Voutier in de Lorris, 102.
7. sailing for Constantinople: Voutier claims that he persuaded Captain Robert to sail immediately for Constantinople. He repeats this assertion in his letter to Marcellus quoted in Alaux. Alaux has a convoluted argument claiming that, despite all appearances, the Estafette must have gone immediately to Constantinople. But naval records quoted in Michon 1900 (318, n. 2) show it arriving in Smyrna on April 26. In his letter of April 25 to Riviere, Pierre David, the French consul in Smyrna, says that he has talked to Robert about the statue. There is a discrepancy between the dates: David couldn’t have talked with Robert on the twenty-fifth because the Estafette had not yet arrived in port. The simplest explanation is that David made a mistake in dating the letter or began it on the twenty-fifth and finished it the next day after talking with Robert.
8. Robert the Devil: Aicard, 231.
Sulfur and vampires
9. descriptions of Melos: Renfrew, Bradford, Melas, Facaros, Slot, Stanford and Finopoulos, Blount, Sonnini, Slade, Bent, Swan.
10. population in 1820: Slot.
11. customs and superstitions: Sonnini.
12. vampires: Bent.
The hand with an apple
13. neighbors offering money, interest of primates: Voutier’s account, quoted in Alaux, de Lorris.
14. description of primates and dragomans: Dakin, 12–15; Slot, 263; Tournefort, 161.
15. life of Brest’s grandfather: Sonnini, 145–6.
16. Brest’s age: Doussault (7) says Brest was about seventy years old in 1847, but this is a mistake since Brest was born 20 March 1789, according to his tombstone, making him thirty-one at the time of the discovery and only fifty-eight when Doussault met him.
17. move to cowshed: Yorgos must have moved the pieces on April 9, because on April 10 the other two boats arrived and Brest took their captains to the cowshed to see the statue. On April 11 Captain Dauriac wrote his letter.
18. ships in port, order of arrival: Besnier, 207.
19. Dauriac’s letter: Alaux, 175
20. Brest’s letter: Besnier, 207.
21. apple myth: Bulfinch.
The ambitious ensign
22. d’Urville’s biography: Rosenman, Guillon.
23. d’Urville description: Rosenman, xivii.
24. “I promised myself”: ibid., xliii.
25. Matterer
quote: ibid., xliv.
26. description of Castro: Swan, 85.
27. provocative women: Sonnini.
28. “The quantity of the insects”: ibid., 147.
29. account of visit to the statue: Matterer, as quoted in Aicard, 146.
The kaptan pasha’s dragoman
30. primates, dragomans, and the islands under the Ottomans: Dakin, 12; Slot, 263; Tournefort, 161.
31. Prince Morousi: Marcellus, 1840, 201.
32. Oconomos: Aicard, 19.
33. Yorgos and price of statue: Aicard, 203, in Brest’s letter to Rivière.
The portrait of a girl
34. Chevrette‘s voyage to Constantinople: Besnier, 210.
35. description of Marcellus: from Ingres sketch in de Lorris, 55.
36. biographical details about Marcellus: Hoeffer.
37. meeting at ambassador’s dinner: Besnier, 212.
38. hike in countryside: Marcellus, 1840, 191.
39. Ender’s painting and the girl: Marcellus, 1840.
40. Chevrette’s departure: Besnier, 210.
41. arrival of Estafette in Constantinople, departure for Melos: Besnier, 215.
Marcellus negotiates a purchase
42. arrival, Voutier quote, other French ships: Alaux, 28.
43. Oconomos raising price: Ravaisson 1892.
44. Russian ship: It is variously reported as Albanian, Russian, Greek, and Austrian. Ravaisson says it was Russian. Discussion of different nationalities in Michon 1900, 313, fn. 1.
45. contrary wind: Marcellus 1840, 192.
46. account of negotiations: All from Marcellus 1840, except the reference to a threat of force, which is in Michon 1900, 317.
47. friendship of Marcellus and dragoman: Marcellus, 1840, 201.
48. 750 francs: Per Marcellus 1840. Several different prices have been quoted. Account of different prices in Michon 1900, 312, fn. 3.
49. account of loading the statue: Alaux, 49. For the date as May 24, Alaux cites Robert’s log. Marcellus says it was the 23rd, but he must be mistaken.
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