When we first encounter the Venus de Milo, usually as children, the first question is "Where are her arms?" We don't know. "What did her arms look like?" We don't know. But there are a million other questions about this work of art that we have no answers for. She wasn't a well-documented statue passed from generation to generation in antiquity. In fact, she was found by an act of vandalism in 1820.
A farmer on the Greek island of Milos was taking rocks from an ancient wall, and unearthed a marble rock that was too irregular for his purposes, so he reburied it. French naval officer Olivier Voutier found him doing just that and paid the farmer to dig the rock back up. There was also a plinth that served as the base for the statue. Fragments of the arms were also found at the site. But the plinth was later discarded, and the other pieces have been lost.
The statue was taken to France, where it remains to this day. We don't know who it is supposed to be. A lot of what we think we know is conjecture based on probability. Read the history that we know of the Venus de Milo and why we don't know more at Mental Floss.
(Image credit: Bradley Weber)
