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Venus de Milo
Aphrodite of Milos
The armless goddess found by a farmer on the Greek island of Milos in 1820.
A farmer digging among ruins on the island of Milos found her in April 1820, in two pieces and already without arms. A French naval officer saw her, the French ambassador in Constantinople bought her, and she was given to King Louis XVIII, who gave her to the Louvre in 1821.
She is probably Aphrodite, the goddess of love, carved around 150–125 BC. A piece of her base, now lost, bore the name of the sculptor Alexandros of Antioch. Nobody knows what her arms were doing: holding an apple, a mirror or a shield are the usual guesses. Stand before it in 3D ›
