She Once Held an Apple - The Venus De Milo

The sculpture of Venus or Aphrodite stands in state in Paris's Louvre, mesmerisingly beautiful despite her broken form. She was discovered by a Greek peasant named Yorgos Kentrotas in 1820, on the island of Milos, broken into two large pieces, an apple in her left hand.

As soon as French naval officers recognized the historical significance of the ancient sculpture, they set about hauling the marble bulk off the island. A fight broke out as Venus was dragged across rocks to a waiting ship and both arms were broken off. The exhausted sailors refused to retrace their steps and search for the body parts, so the goddess's left arm remained cut off at the shoulder and her right at breast level.

The controversial plinth was initially found to fit perfectly as part of the statue, but after it was translated and dated, the embarrassed experts who had publicized the statue as a possible original work by the artist Praxiteles dismissed it as another later addition to the statue. The inscription read: "...(Alex)andros son of Menides, citizen of Antioch on the Maeander made this (statue)...".

The inscribed plinth would have moved the dating of the statue from the Classical Age to the Hellenistic Age because of the style of lettering and the mention of the ancient city of Antioch on the Maeander, which did not exist at the time Praxiteles lived.

So many "Oop's" for one magnificient sculpture.