The Venus de Milo was unearthed on the Greek island of Milos
On this day · 8 April 1820
A farmer digging for building stone in 1820 struck marble and uncovered antiquity's most famous armless goddess.
On April 8, 1820, a farmer named Yorgos Kentrotas was digging for stone among ancient ruins on the Aegean island of Milos when his pick struck buried marble. Half-sunk in two pieces lay a larger-than-life statue of Aphrodite, the goddess of love — the work later misnamed the Venus de Milo.
French naval officers excavating nearby took notice, and the find moved fast. Within a year the Marquis de Rivière, France’s ambassador, had acquired it and presented it to King Louis XVIII, who handed it to the Louvre in March 1821.
“In barely two years, the Venus had moved from the shadows to the light.”
Carved from Parian marble in the late 2nd century BC, the statue stands over two meters tall. Its missing arms have invited two centuries of guesswork, but curators wisely never restored them. Today it ranks beside the Mona Lisa among the Louvre’s most visited treasures.
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