THE VENUS OF MILO.

Otago Witness, Issue 3112, 5 November 1913, Page 77

THE VENUS OF MILO.

By Jessie Mackay. For 90 years the “Venus of Milo” has been the synonym for all grace and beauty that can be compassed by the art of sculpture. Never shall we know whose hand chiselled this rarest glory of goddesshood, nor for whose •ds.lignt she shone on her long shattered pedestal 2000 years ago. If the marble lips could speak, what talcs of Cleopatra, of Ca;sar, of Pompey, or of Nero might they not utter? For a world of mystery will always surround this lost glory of the Even among the lavish wealth of Greek art treasures in these far-off ages this must have been a pearl beyond price in the land where it was shaped, and no explanation can ever be made why for unknown ages it had lain hidden from human ken in the remotest and obscurest islet of the lonely Cyclades. An American magazine, the 'Open Court, has just recalled the story of its restoration to the light of day, and its transportation to the Louvre, where it still remains to charm successive generations of art-lovers. Milo is the Latin form of Melos, one of*the smallest isles of the Greek Archipelago. It is the farthest south-westerly of the Cyclades, almost due west of the tip of the More a. It was in very ancient times a Dorian island, conquered after a stout resistance by Athens, and neopled with an Attic folk, who remained in close touch with the mother city even after the lonian Confederation was broken. The word Melos means “apple,” and this may have referred to its former fertility or to some mythological connection, perhaps with the Judgment of Paris, and, as we shall see, it has even been surmised that the word might have some reference to this very statue, if the lost hand of the torso did indeed hold the fruit of destiny that led to the war of Troy. Nor was Milo so inconsiderable a place 2UOO years back as its present appearance might indicate, for the archaeologist has been busy there unearthing ten>ples and remains, some of them prehistoric, so the Venus may not have been unfitly housed there ere ruin came upon the hapless seafolk long ago. In 1820 Yorgos Bottoms, a peasant of the island, was working near the ruins of an-ancient theatre when he chanced upon the carefully-hidden mouth of an underground cave, in which lay the broken statue of a woman and some shaped fragments of marble, as well as a defaced plinth with a half-obliterated inscription, on which it was surmised the statue had stood. Bottoms was advised to sell his prize to the French Government, and submitted it to the official French Resident. This island consul showed no great alacrity in bargaining for it till Dumont d’Urville, a ytmng French ensign of noble birth ? chanced to see it with a friend, and hastened to headquarters at Constantinople to let the French Ambassador know what treasure had come his way. A warship was sent for it, which, however, had much work to do in the Mediterranean before the voyage was over. Thus' it was a year after the lucky Bottoms found her that the wandering goddess was brought at last to the Louvre. That she was meant for a divinity was gathered, not Only from her appearance, but from the fashion of her hair, where there was a place for the lost coronal that betokened her celestial rank. There was, indeed, no positive proof that she was meant for Venus, or rather Aphrodite, as the Greeks called her; but the calm, lofty, yet most womanly beauty of the figure points to a time in Greek art when Aphrodite was not the light, unworthy conception she became, in a later and debased mythology. The commanding purity of her aspect was all-suggestive of the far-back time when the Great Mother of primaeval religions was worshipped, and worshipped worthily and purely, under many aspects as the benign protectress of mankind, but under none with more appealing tenderness than under the name of the foam-born Aphrodite. Isis, Ishtar, Mylitta were all names that spoke the character of the Goddess of Love, and in each case the name meant far other at firs't than in after days of national and religious decadence. To return to the discovery of the statue, there still remain the reports of Dumont d’Urville and his friend; but they cast not much greater light on the mystery than later speculators have cast since, if as much. Three hands were found about tlie same time: but it is doubted whether any of them belonged to the broken figure, since workmanship seemed inferior to that which appeared on it, which, indeed, has ever been judged worthy of Phidias or Praxiteles in the palmiest day of Hellenic sculpture. A world of speculation has been raised about the posture of the lost arms. One of the hands discovered near held an apple, and some have surmised that the Judgment of Paris was woven into the story of divinity the statue was designed to tell. At least half a dozen restorations have been attempted, but none can be said to be wholly successful. Some have held'to the idea of the lifted apple; others have imagined that the left hand grasped a shield; some have depicted the goddess with a mirror; and, again, others have fancied that the lost arms encircled a baby. It remains a riddle of which the answer is for ever lost. Nor did the broken inscription on the plinth, if it did indeed form part of the pedestal, show who or what the statue commemorated. It referred to a certain Alexander of a somewhat late Greek town. The wotos, however, go, together with the evidence of the workmanship, to show that the sculpture could not have been earlier than 400 n.c. or later than the first half of the- second century B.C.

This', then, seems all that we can ever know of this noble study of divinity clad in woman’s gentle iofm{ the cave tf Milo gave up its treasure, but kept its secret.