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Venus of Milo

The Venus de Milo  is an ancient Greek statue and one of the most famous works of ancient Greek sculpture. Initially it was attributed to the sculptor Praxiteles, but based on an inscription that was on its plinth, the statue is now thought to be the work of Alexandros of Antioch.

Created sometime between 130 and 100 BC, the statue is believed to depict Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love and beauty, although some scholars claim it is the sea-goddess Amphitrite, venerated on Milos. It is a marble sculpture, slightly larger than life size at 203 cm (6 ft 8 in) high. Part of an arm and the original plinth were lost following the statue's discovery. It is currently on permanent display at the Louvre Museum in Paris. The statue is named after Aphrodite's Roman name, Venus, and the Greek island of Milos, where it was discovered.

Venus of Milo Stamp Collection

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Madagaskar 1994

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Greece 1937

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Paraguay 1967

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France 1999

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Upper Volta 1964

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Dahomey 1967

Discovery

It is generally asserted that the Venus de Milo was discovered on 8 April 1820 by a peasant named Yorgos Kentrotas, inside a buried niche within the ancient city ruins of Milos. Milos is the current village of Trypiti, on the island of Milos in the Aegean, which was then a part of the Ottoman Empire.

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Hungary 1975

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South Korea 1980

The consensus is that the statue was found in two large 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.

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North Cyprus 1989

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Gambia 2013

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France 2007

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A restoration proposal by archaeologist and art historian Adolf Furtwängler in 1916 showing how the statue may have originally looked

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