Venus de Milo
Identification

The Venus de Milo is probably a sculpture of the goddess Aphrodite, but its fragmentary state makes secure identification difficult. The earliest written accounts of the sculpture, by a French captain and the French vice-consul on Melos, both identify it as representing Aphrodite holding the apple of discord, apparently on the basis of the now-lost hand holding an apple found with the sculpture. An alternative identification proposed by Reinach is that she represents the sea-goddess Amphitrite, and was originally grouped with a sculpture of Poseidon from Melos, discovered in 1878. Other proposed identifications include a Muse, Nemesis, or Sappho.

The authorship and date of the Venus de Milo were both disputed from its discovery. Within a month of its acquisition by the Louvre, three French scholars had published papers on the statue, disagreeing on all aspects of its interpretation: Toussaint-Bernard Éméric-David thought it dated to c. 420 BC – c. 380 BC, between sculptors Phidias and Praxiteles; Quatremère de Quincy attributed it to the mid-fourth century and the circle of Praxiteles; and the Comte de Clarac thought it a later copy of a work by Praxiteles. The scholarly consensus in the 19th century was that the Venus dated to the fourth century BC. In 1893, Adolf Furtwängler was the first to argue that it was in fact late Hellenistic, dating to c. 150 BC – c. 50 BC, and this dating continues to be widely accepted.

One of the inscriptions discovered with the statue, which was drawn by Debay as fitting into the missing section of the statue's plinth, names the sculptor as andros, son of enides, of Antioch on the Maeander. The inscription must date to after 280 BC, when Antioch on the Maeander was founded; the lettering of the inscription suggests a date of 150 – 50 BC. Maggidis argues based on this inscription, as well as the style of the statue and the increasing prosperity of Melos in the period due to Roman involvement on the island which he suggests is a plausible context for the commissioning of the sculpture, that it probably dates to c. 150 BC – c. 110 BC. Rachel Kousser agrees with Furtwängler's dates for the sculpture. Marianne Hamiaux suggests c. 160 BC – c. 140 BC.

The association of the fragmentary artist's signature with the sculpture, and thus the identification of the sculptor as Alexandros of Antioch, is not universally accepted. Kousser and Jean-Luc Martinez both question this connection. Kousser notes that though the plaque is shown fitting into the broken base of the Venus in Debay's drawing, the drawing shows no evidence of the sculpture's missing left foot which would have rested on it, while in Voutier's sketch of the finds the plaque is shown as the base of one of the herms found alongside the Venus. As the inscription is lost, its connection to the Venus cannot be either proven or disproven.

Magiddis suggested that the Venus de Milo was carved by the same sculptor who also made the Poseidon of Melos. Isméni Trianti has suggested that three further sculptures found in Melos can be attributed to the same artist: two statues of women, and a colossal statue of a god.
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