Pretty armless, but why did Venus de Milo lose her limbs?
Therewasagreatcrowd around the statue of Venus de Milo when we visited her in the Louvre in Paris.
It was almost as big as the mob of people surrounding the Mona Lisa. Now the Mona Lisa has her famously enigmatic smile, but there is something mysterious about Venus de Milo, too, namely what happened to her arms? – R. The short answer is, no one knows. The Venus de Milo, or Aphrodite of Milos, is an ancient Greek statue and one of the most famous works of ancient sculpture.
Created some time between 130 and 100 BC, it depicts Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love and beauty ( Venus to the Romans).
Made from marble, it is slightly larger than life-size at 6ft 8in high. Itwasdiscoveredin1820bya
peasant named Yorgos Kentrotas, inside a buried niche within the ancient city ruins of Milos, the current village of Tripiti, on the island of Milos in the Aegean.
The statue was found in two pieces (the upper torso and the lower draped legs) along with several herms (pillars topped with heads), fragments of the upper left arm and left hand holding an apple, and an inscribed plinth.
There is a filled hole below her right breast that originally contained a metal tenon that would have supported the separately carved right arm.
From an inscription that was on its plinth, it is thought to be the work of Alexandros of Antioch.
The Venus is also missing the metal jewellery that would have decorated her arms, head and ears in ancient times. Why are railway sleepers (and I don’t mean the overnight train to London) so called? – C.
Sleepers, also known as crossties, are rectangular supports for the railway track, keeping it fixed to the correct gauge.
The are probably known as sleepers simply because, at a stretch, they look like a lot of people lying down having a sleep! Made of concrete or wood, there are approximately 18,000,000 in the UK.