Collection place: Aegean Islands, Greece / Donor: Alfred Emerson / Accession number: Acc.181 - Hearst Museum Portal Search Results

Start Over Collection place Aegean Islands, Greece Donor Alfred Emerson Accession number Acc.181

Hearst Museum object titled Statue (reproduction), accession number 21-255, described as Cast of Aphrodite of Melos (Latin: Venus). From a marble statue discovered on the island of Melos, Cyclades, in 1820. Two wooden slabs have now been removed from between lower and upper sections of the Aphrodite. A left hand and apple preserved in Paris probably belonged to her. The goddess’s left hand probably held her dress. But other restorations have been ventured: (A) With a round shield, supposed to be her husband’s and using its convex surface as a mirror; (B) As Wingless Victory, writing on a shield like the winged Victories of Trajan’s Column and of Brescia; (C) Coupled with Mars (Greek: Ares), as in certain extant, antique groups. The Marquis de Rivières, French ambassador to the Porte, secured it then for 40,000 francs, and presented it to Louis XVIII. The King placed the statue in the Louvre Museum, Paris, where it remains that gallery’s finest antique sculpture. Furtwaengler and Possenti give the statue the apple and a cippus under its left elbow and name it The Fortune of Melos. Compare Furtwaengler’s Masterpiece page... A lost inscription described the statue in characters of about 200 B.C., as a work of Antigonos (?) of Antioch on the Maeander.