Venus de Milo - wikipedia Venus de Milo Ancient Greek marble statue of a woman For other uses, see Venus de Milo ( disambiguation ). Venus de Milo Greek : Αφροδίτη της Μήλου Artist Alexandros of Antioch Year Between 130 and 100 BC Type Marble 203 cm ( 80 in ) Condition Arms broken off ; otherwise intact Location Louvre Museum, Paris, France Coordinates 48 ° 51 ′ 36 '' N 2 ° 20 ′ 14 '' E ﻿ / ﻿ 48.859958 ° N 2.337269 ° E ﻿ / 48.859958 ; 2.337269 Coordinates : 48 ° 51 ′ 36 '' N 2 ° 20 ′ 14 '' E ﻿ / ﻿ 48.859958 ° N 2.337269 ° E ﻿ / 48.859958 ; 2.337269 The Aphrodite of Milos ( Greek : Αφροδίτη της Μήλου, Aphroditi tis Milou ), better but mistakenly known as 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, however from an inscription that was on its plinth, the statue is 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 ; however, 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 its discovery. It is currently on permanent display at the Louvre Museum in Paris. The statue is named after the Greek island of Milos, where it was discovered. Contents 1 Description 2 Discovery and history 3 Modern use 4 See also 5 References 5.1 Citations 6 Sources 7 External links Description The Aphrodite of Milos is `` widely renowned '' for the mystery of her missing arms. There is a filled hole below her right breast that originally contained a `` metal tenon '' that would have supported the separately carved right arm. Discovery and history It is generally asserted that the Aphrodite of Milos was discovered on 8 April 1820 by a 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 ( also Melos, or Milo ) in the Aegean, which was then a part of the Ottoman Empire. Elsewhere the discoverers are identified as Yorgos Bottonis and his son Antonio. Paul Carus gave the site of discovery as `` the ruins of an ancient theater in the vicinity of Castro, the capital of the island '', adding that Bottonis and his son `` came accidentally across a small cave, carefully covered with a heavy slab and concealed, which contained a fine marble statue in two pieces, together with several other marble fragments. This happened in February, 1820 ''. He apparently based these assertions on an article he had read in the Century Magazine. The Australian historian Edward Duyker, citing a letter written by Louis Brest who was the French consul in Milos in 1820, asserts the discoverer of the statue was Theodoros Kendrotas and that he has been confused with his younger son Giorgios ( known phonetically as Yorgos ) who later claimed credit for the find. Duyker asserts that Kendrotas was taking stone from a ruined chapel on the edge of his property -- terraced land that had once formed part of a Roman gymnasium -- and that he discovered an oblong cavity some 1.2 x 1.5 metres deep in the volcanic tuff. It was in this cavity, which had three wings, that Kendrotas first noticed the upper part of the statue. Notwithstanding these anomalies, 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. Front view Three - quarter view Back view 3D Model In 1871, during the Paris Commune uprising, many public buildings were burned. The Venus de Milo statue was secreted out of the Louvre Museum in an oak crate and hidden in the basement of the Prefecture of Police. Though the Prefecture was burned, the statue survived undamaged. In 1920, sculptor Robert Ingersoll Aitken created a stir when he criticized the display, lighting, and placement of the statue of Venus de Milo in the museum. In the autumn of 1939, the Venus was packed for removal from the Louvre in anticipation of the outbreak of war. Scenery trucks from the Comédie - Française transported the Louvre 's masterpieces to safer locations in the countryside. During World War II, the statue was sheltered safely in the Château de Valençay, along with the Winged Victory of Samothrace and Michelangelo 's Slaves. The great fame of the Venus de Milo during the nineteenth century was not simply the result of its admitted beauty ; it also owed much to a major propaganda effort by the French authorities. In 1815, France had returned the Medici Venus to the Italians after it had been looted by Napoleon Bonaparte. The Medici Venus, regarded as one of the finest classical sculptures in existence, caused the French to promote the Venus de Milo as a greater treasure than that which they recently had lost. The statue was praised dutifully by many artists and critics as the epitome of graceful female beauty. However, Pierre - Auguste Renoir was among its detractors, labeling it a `` big gendarme ''. Modern Use A restoration proposal by Adolf Furtwängler showing how the statue may have originally looked The statue has greatly influenced masters of modern art ; one prime example is Salvador Dalí 's Venus de Milo with Drawers. The statue was formerly part of the seal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons ( ASPS ), one of the oldest associations of plastic surgeons in the world. In February 2010, the German magazine Focus featured a doctored image of this Venus giving Europe the middle finger, which resulted in a defamation lawsuit against the journalists and the publication. They were found not guilty by the Greek court. A plot to steal the statue is at the center of the 1966 spoof spy film The Last of the Secret Agents ?, starring Marty Allen and Steve Rossi. In The Simpsons episode Homer Badman, a Gummi Venus de Milo parodies the statue. See also Aphrodite of Knidos References Citations Jump up ^ https://www.louvre.fr/en/oeuvre-notices/aphrodite-known-venus-de-milo Jump up ^ Curtis 2003. Jump up ^ Venus de Milo at Encyclopædia Britannica Jump up ^ Carus, Paul ( 1916 ). The Venus of Milo : An Archeological Study of the Goddess of Womanhood. Open Court Publishing Company. p. 2. Retrieved 6 April 2018. Jump up ^ Duyker 2014, pp. 61 -- 62. Jump up ^ The Greater Journey, David McCullough, p. 326 Jump up ^ `` Criticises museum sculpture settings '' ( pdf ). New York Times. 21 May 1920. Retrieved 30 January 2011. Jump up ^ Nicholas 1995, p. 55 Jump up ^ Nicholas 1995, p. 87 Jump up ^ Bonazzoli, Francesca ; Robecchi, Michele ( 2014 ). Mona Lisa to Marge : How the World 's Greatest Artworks Entered Popular Culture. New York : Preste. ISBN 978 - 3791348773. Jump up ^ Brent, Burt ( 2008 ). `` The Reconstruction of Venus : Following Our Legacy ''. Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. 121 ( 6 ) : 2170. doi : 10.1097 / PRS. 0b013e318170a7b6. Jump up ^ `` Greece Pursues Venus Defamation Case '' Archived 7 December 2011 at the Wayback Machine., Diehn, Sonya Angelica Courthouse News Service. 1 December 2011 Jump up ^ `` Greek Court acquits Focus journalists '' Archived 15 July 2012 at the Wayback Machine... Burda Newsroom, 3 April 2012 Sources Curtis, Gregory ( 2003 ). Disarmed : The Story of the Venus de Milo. New York : Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 978 - 0375415234. OCLC 51937203. Duyker, Edward ( 2014 ). Dumont d'Urville : Explorer and Polymath. Dunedin, New Zealand : Otago University Press. ISBN 978 - 1877578700. Nicholas, Lynn H. ( May 1995 ) ( 1994 ). The Rape of Europa : The Fate of Europe 's Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War. New York City : Vintage Books. ISBN 978 - 0 - 679 - 40069 - 1. OCLC 32531154. Venus de Milo : The Oxford Dictionary of Art James Grout, Venus de Milo, part of the Encyclopædia Romana External links Wikimedia Commons has media related to Venus de Milo. Venus de Milo - official page 3D model of Venus de Milo via photogrammetric survey of an 1850 Louvre atelier plaster cast at Skulpturhalle Basel museum Musée du Louvre -- Louvre Museum : Venus de Milo WorldCat Identities BNF : cb11988595b ( data ) GND : 4206801 - 0 LCCN : n99006708 VIAF : 195011024 Portals Access related topics Visual arts portal Greece portal Find out more on Wikipedia 's Sister projects Media from Commons Retrieved from `` https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Venus_de_Milo&oldid=866347896 '' Categories : 1820 archaeological discoveries Venus de Milo Hellenistic sculpture Ancient Melos 2nd - century BC sculptures Ancient Greek and Roman sculptures of the Louvre Archaeological discoveries in Greece Nude sculptures Marble sculptures in France Hidden categories : Articles with Encyclopædia Britannica links CS1 : Julian -- Gregorian uncertainty Webarchive template wayback links Articles with short description Use dmy dates from September 2012 Coordinates not on Wikidata Articles containing Greek - language text Wikipedia articles needing page number citations from April 2018 Wikipedia articles with BNF identifiers Wikipedia articles with GND identifiers Wikipedia articles with LCCN identifiers Wikipedia articles with VIAF identifiers Talk Contents About Wikipedia Afrikaans Alemannisch Asturianu Azərbaycanca Беларуская Беларуская ( тарашкевіца ) ‎ Български Bosanski Brezhoneg Català Čeština Corsu Dansk Deutsch Eesti Ελληνικά Español Esperanto Euskara فارسی Français Gaeilge Galego 한국어 Հայերեն Hrvatski Bahasa Indonesia Italiano עברית Basa Jawa ქართული Latina Latviešu Lietuvių Magyar Македонски Nederlands 日本 語 Norsk Occitan پنجابی Polski Português Ripoarisch Română Русский Sicilianu Simple English Slovenčina Slovenščina Српски / srpski Srpskohrvatski / српскохрватски Suomi Svenska தமிழ் Türkçe Українська اردو Tiếng Việt Winaray 粵語 中文 54 more Edit links This page was last edited on 29 October 2018, at 20 : 13 ( UTC ). Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution - ShareAlike License ; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia ® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization. About Wikipedia

Question: why does the statue of venus have no arms
Answer: broken off