Shipping and Handling $12.00
Add to My Shopping Cart
Louvre Museum, Paris
c. 200 B.C. Greek
This figurine represents the Aphrodite of Melos. In
1820, a peasant named Yorgos found the original broken body in an underground
cavern on the Aegean island of Melos. Later she was taken out of Greece
under unclear circumstances and brought to Paris where she was to be admired
by the millions of visitors to that country's great museum, the Louvre.
Her graceful body symbolizes an ideal of beauty that many long for but none
attain. The French named her the Venus of Milo and she has since been popularly
known under that name. Aphrodite was the Goddess of Love, identified in
Rome with Venus. Although Homer describes Aphrodite as the daughter of Zeus
and Dion, the more popular view was that she was conceived in the foam of
the ocean from the seed of Uranus, dropped there when he was castrated,
her name meaning "foam-born." Aphrodite was married to Hephaestus, but she
loved Ares and she was known for her many love affairs, notably with Adonis and Anchises.