Short Stuff: Venus de Milo

Step into today's short stuff to learn all about the armless wonder!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, I'm welcome to the short stuff. I'm josh, there's chuck.
Neither one of us have four arms, which means that
this is the short stuff about Venus de Mila. Let's go.
That's right. Who resides in the louver, right? I think
since eighteen twenty one when Louis the what is that
eight No, yeah, the eighteen man. You threw me off.

(00:27):
Always forget how to read those. It's been a while. Yeah,
Louis the eighteenth donated Venus de Mila, one of the
most famous dare I say statues in the world. Yeah. Also,
just as a little a side chuck, if you ever
kind of get tripped up by something like that, you're
talking to somebody, just swap it out for like a
word like Louis the Magnificent, but say it authoritatively and

(00:49):
the person will think that that's the name for that
particular right, Louis the Overeater. So yeah, So the Venus
to my Hello first ended up in Paris in eighty one.
Apparently that was um that was a really good timing
because the nation of France was kind of in the

(01:10):
doll drums as far as art is concerned. Right, Yeah,
there's a gentleman that will make a couple of appearances
in this episode. His name is Andrew Stewart, and uh,
I think he's a professor right art art historian and professor, Yeah,
professor of Greek Studies at UC Berkeley emeritus too. Oh well, yeah,
the guy knows what he's talking about. Yeah. So apparently France, uh,

(01:33):
they needed their national pride kind of picked up, and
apparently Venus went a long way toward doing that. Yeah,
because Napoleon had sacked a bunch of countries and city
states and nations art collections plundered, and after the French Revolution,
Um well no, that was way after the French Revolution,
after Napoleon was banished, We'll say that France had to

(01:56):
give back a lot of that art. So the Louver
kind of got sacked in verse. And then also the
big dumb rival England, from France's vantage point of course,
not mine, had just acquired the Elgin Marbles, which meant
that they had a some sculpture by the greatest sculpture
of antiquity known to humanity. Faddists, Yeah, I got it. Um.

(02:22):
So the Venus de Milo comes along and they're like this, this,
this is the most important thing I ever found. Let's
um bandy it about as much as possible as such. Yeah,
and the whole thing with Venus de Milo is sort
of the mystery surrounding the origins and who the artist
was and who maybe she had been she may have been,
and and of course the big question is two questions,

(02:43):
what happened to those arms and what will those arms
are doing right before they were broken off, which I
have to admit I'd never thought of until reading this. Yeah,
I just never thought of her arms were doing anything
of note, it's kind of weird now that think about it.
But the funny thing is is, like you said, she
shrouded in mystery as to her identity. But the one

(03:06):
thing we know for certain she is not is Venus,
the goddess of love to Rome. She was Greek and
produced by the Greeks, so she would have been aphrodite
at best, but we're not even sure she's aphrodite. She
could be a number of other people that have been proposed,
or a number of other goddesses. It didn't even have
to be a goddess, right, No, it didn't. I saw

(03:28):
that she could have been an everyday person. But also, um,
she was found on me losch Uh, the Greek island
which was really engaged in the sea as far as
trade and fishing and all that. So some people have
supposed that she was um actually Amphra Tidy in Amphatidy

(03:50):
is there an r in there, thank you chuck, um,
that she's the goddess of the sea, Poseidon's old lady.
As far as iikers would say, Yeah, and in Venus
was always thought to be classical, but I think they
did enough digging and found that she was actually neo classical,

(04:12):
uh and not classical, although they say they sometimes still
refer to her as a masterpiece of the classical classical genre. Yeah,
because she again kind of carries France's national ego on
her shoulders. Um. So the idea that she was you know,
created by some unknown master far back in antiquity, um,

(04:33):
in the classical period is is kind of you know,
part of France's pride in this thing. But supposedly, yeah,
they figured out there was a German archaeologist named Adolph
seriously fort Wrangler, I love that man's last name, foot
thinker who that's even better, who basically said, yeah, she's
she's neo classical. You can tell from how she's dressed.

(04:55):
But then I guess they also when she was found,
they discovered a pedestal that had the sculptor's signature UM
that showed that she was very clearly created UM by
a guy named Alexandro's of Magnesia, not to be confused
with the milk of Magnesia, but that would be. But
then they lost it. They conveniently lost this pedestal and said, no, no,

(05:19):
this this is clearly created by one of the masters.
We just don't know which one, right, So good set up.
I think we should take a little break and talk
about those arms. I'm dina know about the arms right
after this. Well, now we're on the road, driving in
your truck. Want to learn a thing or two from

(05:39):
Josh can chuck it stuff you should know, all right? Arms? Yeah?

(06:04):
So again, never thought that her arms were doing anything.
I think I just assumed she was being like like, hey,
how's it going, I'm holding my hands out here, yeah,
or maybe like I don't know kind of thing um.
But there there has been a lot of debate about
what was going on with her arms. Apparently, at some point,
an arm that would fit this statue, the venus de

(06:27):
milo Um an arm holding an apple was found, and
they think it's possible. Some people think it's possible that
that was originally attached to the venus to Milo. Yeah,
and we should also point out there were some other
things missing from the original statue, like originally she supposedly
had metal jewelry bracelet earrings in a headband because they're

(06:51):
little fixation holes on those places in her body. And
they think that she might have also been painted at
one point and now that had it away, and then
the arms were I guess maybe some people might think
if they never looked into it, that you never had
the arms, but they were broken off because you can
see where that there were the dowel rods and everything.

(07:13):
Because it wasn't carved as one big piece. You know,
these arms were put on afterward. But um, yeah, like
you said, they found an arm with an apple, and
some people are like, well, yeah, she was holding an
apple on one of those hands, which actually fits. There's
a Greek myth called the Judgment of Paris about a
mythological um contest between Aphrodite, the goddess of love, hera

(07:37):
Zeus's wife, and Athena, the goddess of war and um
this contest between them was won by Aphrodite and the
prize was an apple, So this would have kind of
commented on the judgment of Paris and Aphrodite winning this.
And apparently it's symbolic of like the choice that that
people have in life, or that men back in ancient

(07:58):
Greece had right. So, um, your your choice in life
was between love, war and politics, Aphrodite Athena or hera
um and the Aphrodite one that people wanted to they
wanted they wanted to live with their heart. That's what
the statue symbolize in that sense. Yeah, and that's one

(08:18):
take on it. Um. I like this other one a lot.
This woman Elizabeth Wayland Barber, who's professor Emerita of Archaeology
and Linguistics at Occidental College, which I used to live near.
So I'm all about that. Um. She says, you know
what I think, And and she even did like this
three D renderings to sort of prove her point. She said,

(08:40):
I think she was a regular lady who was weaving
um thread. And she said, if you look at the
angle of the back and and ladies were doing all
this textile work back then, if you look at her
positioning and the way she was leaning and even where
exactly she was looking. It looks to me like she

(09:00):
was spinning thread. And they if you, you know, if
you look online, she has their pictures of her three
D rendered spinning the thread and it looks real enough
to me for someone who knows nothing about spent the
thread spinning. Well. Also, not only that, apparently the musculature
of her shoulders and arms, um, would be about what
you would expect for somebody who was spinning. She makes

(09:23):
a weird position. Yeah, well, she makes a really good case.
But also she this doesn't even need to be a
statue of just an ordinary person because apparently she says
Aphrodite was also the goddess of spinning, well, the goddess
of procreation and love. Um, so this would fit still anyway. Yeah,
that's a good point. Um. I did see another thing

(09:45):
that said, you know, from the angle of her back
that they said, it's one of those things where retroactically
you look back and it's like, you know, did Mona
Lisa have a disease or something? And they said, did
Venus de Milo have some sort of spinal condition? Because
when you look at the way her back is twisted
and angled. It is a very irregular um route for

(10:06):
the spine. But you know it's also a statue. Is
it one of those things that would be that would
be explained by the spinning position? Well, I mean it,
she says. It matches what could have been a spinning position.
But a spinning position could have been hard on your back. Maybe,
I don't know. I would guess it would be hard
on your back for sure. It doesn't sound like something

(10:26):
I'd wanted to so the Venus de Milo. If you
haven't ever seen it, go see it. It's pretty neat.
It's in the loop. You can get there pretty easily,
especially if you're vaccinated against COVID nineteen. Good test. Uh,
since I said COVID nineteen, everybody that means short stuff
is out. Stuff you should know is a production of

(10:49):
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