On This Day in History: April 8
The Venus de Milo
People of any age can walk up close to the Venus de Milo in the Louvre in Paris and see a two-millennia-old carving of a woman’s nipples, but if you post them uncovered on Facebook Mark gets the vapors and bans you for 30 days. Fucking Mark.
--On This Day in History Shit Went Down: April 8, 1820--
The marble statue is dated to around 100 BCE, and presumed to have been carved by Alexandros of Antioch. Many scholars believe it depicts Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love. Others proclaim she is a representation of Amphitrite, a goddess of the sea who was venerated on the Greek island of Milos. The name is fucked either way, because “Venus” is the Roman goddess of love. I mean, shit, they named an entire planet after her and she gets this damn statue too?
Anyway, Milos is a small volcanic island in the Aegean Sea with a current population of about 5,000 people. On April 8, 1820, almost 2,000 years after she was carved, Venus was unearthed. Who discovered her is a subject of some debate. It might have been a peasant named Theodoros Kendrotos, or it might have been his son Giorgios. Or maybe someone else entirely. Anyway, someone was digging around some ancient ruins a couple hundred years ago and discovered a small cave that had been carefully concealed with a heavy slab of rock.
The rock was moved, and her torso was poking out and she said hi, ‘bout fucking time. Venus was found in two pieces, upper and lower. Fragments of both arms were also found, the left hand holding an apple. She became famous because of a marketing campaign. Napoleon had plundered a shit-ton of art, but after he got his ass kicked at Waterloo other countries were all hey give that shit back, so the French gave that shit back and the Louvre was looking mighty fucking empty. Then Venus was made a gift to King Louis Bunch of Numbers, and they were all fuck yeah this is way better than that Venus de’ Medici we had to give back. Come visit! Try the veal.
Sick of being hidden away, Venus had to suffer the indignity a second time when the fucking Nazis invaded in World War II. Venus, along with several other priceless works of art, spent the war in the French countryside until the fascist bastards were kicked out.
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I was fortunate to get to visit the Louvre just this past December and see those nipples with my very own peepers. And of course, "King Louis Bunch of Numbers" will now be my go-to for referring to French monarchs.
I laughed out loud at “Then Venus was made a gift to King Louis Bunch of Numbers”. You made my morning.