THE VENUS OF MILO.
CONSIDERABLE sensation has been created by the recent discoveries of Mr. Claudius Tarral, an English gentleman resident in Paris, where he is much esteemed for his personal character and for his knowledge of the fine arts. The far-famed Venus of Milo has ever been a study for artists and antiquarians. Does the fair goddess represent a Venus at the bath, a Nymph, a Victory, or some other divinity? Was she, in her pristine beauty and integrity, alone, or did she form part of a group ? These questions remain unanswered::: notwithstanding the erudite publications of such men as Muller, Count Clarac, Quatremere de Quincey, Letronne, R. Rochette, H. Brunn, and many others, not less difficulty is experienced in deciding what genius produced this wonder of art and pride of the Louvre ! The best authorities agree that none but a Phidias or a Praxiteles could have fashioned a figure so divine.
If we are not mistaken, Mr. Tarral is likely, in a book now print- ing, to set all these matters at rest. Count de Nieuwerkerke, director of the imperial museums of Paris, and sculptor of no mean talent, is so struck with Mr. Tarral's ideas, that he is now engaged in restoring a plaster copy of the Venus under his direction. According to Mr. Tarral's views, the goddess formed part of a group, having at her left side a youthful Cupid darting his arrow. She represents Venus vic- torious over her rivals Juno and Minerva; she wears on her head Juno's golden diadem, and stands with her left foot on Minerva's helmet; in her left hand she holds the historic apple. This muti- lated hand and apple, as well as the half of the arm, are fortunately preserved in the magazine of the Louvre, but, owing to a false inter- pretation of the statue and gratuitous suppositions, were not con- sidered as belonging originally to the figure, although they were found with it at Milo. Mr. Tarral has not confined his investigations to the Louvre ; he has scrutinized all the galleries of Europe. He recently discovered in the museum at Florence a fine antique copy of the head of the Venus of Milo, adorned with a diadem, but grossly repaired and placed on the neck of an Apollo, which sufficiently accounts for its having escaped due notice. It is, however, the only copy yet found, and, like the great original, is carved in the same peculiar, finely grained, and beautifully white marble—not from Paros, as is universally believed, nor from Mount Pentelicus, but probably from Mylassa, or some quarry of Celia in Asia Minor ; it
has the closest affinity to the marble of the statues so fortunately dug up by Mr. Newton at Iralicarnassus.
Mr. Tarral considers the magnificent colossal head and torso of the Louvre called Inopus, a river-god, which connoisseurs compare for its grandeur, reclining attitude, and similarity of subject to the Ilissus of the Elgin marbles, to be of the same marble and by the same chisel as the Venus of Milo, to which the features bear a very strong family likeness. This fine fragment was brought from the Isle of Rhodes in a French ship with other stones as worthless ballast; it is honoured as a work of Phidias, and placed in a small room apart from the collection of antiques, and thus too often escapes the stranger's admiration. Besides its intrinsic merit as a work of art, it has always attracted the sculptor's attention on account of its strange and inexplicable mutilation, the half of the forehead and head being, as it were, neatly destroyed, or rather cut away. This enigma is ex- plained by Mr. Tarral, who says the head was originally carved out of two separate pieces of marble, the joining being easily concealed by the flowing hair. Mr. Tarral has restored the head in this manner, which carries conviction with it; the body of the statue was probably also made with several blocks of marble. This is another of the many arguments adduced to prove that the gifted author of
the Inopus was in the habit of carving his statues from several blocks of marble, a most rare and al:solar practice. The Venus of
Milo, Mr. Tarral says, was also composed of at least three pieces of marble, and most probably of four. The finest statue in the British Museum (excepting always the Elgin), the Townley Venus, which is a very near imitation of the Venus of Milo, in the same quality of marble, and no doubt from the same school of art, is similarly made with two pieces of marble joined together at the waist under the
drapery, just as is the case with the great original, from which it
differs essentially by its inferiority, and by its being highly polished. The last and most interesting conclusion we are able to give the reader is, that Mr. Tarral has no hesitation in asserting that neither Phidias nor Praxiteles could have sculptured the Venus of Milo and the Inopus, their style of art and mode of finishing being totally different: that the only artist to whom they can be safely ascribed is Agessander, the author of the famous Laocoon, which was also com- posed of three (or six) pieces of marble, the joinings of which were so qlrilfully hidden by the drapery and the encircling windings of the serpents, as to deceive the experienced eyes of the ancients, for Pliny declares it was in one block of marble. Thus, then, the Laocoon, the Venus of Milo, and the Inopus, three masterpieces of art, are all executed in the same peculiar marble, all remarkable for their curving lines of grace, for their intense expression and unusual movement, all carved out of several pieces of marble, and all finished by the
sculptor's chisel without the aid of any polishing. This mode of finishing statues entirely with the chisel was exceedingly rare among
the Greeks : the illustrious Winkelman and Q. Visconti mention but three examples—the Laocoon, the Sleeping Faun at Munich, and a fine old Lion at Venice, which was stolen from Athens by that
miscreant Morosini, who so pitilessly bombarded the Parthenon in
1687. These are certainly potent arguments, strong analogies, mere coincidences they cannot be. One more proof remains to crown the whole. The original basis of the Venus of Milo bore an antique genuine Greek inscription, which, from some unaccountable motive, or some unpardonable neglect, is now no longer to be found in the Louvre. Happily, however, the truthful and learned German epi- graphist Osann copied and published it. This important document, though somewhat injured, has been much overlooked. The inscrip- tion attests that the Venus of Milo was the work of . . . andros, of Antiochia on the Meander. The first letters of the artist's name are wanting, but can any doubt be entertained, after what has been said, that the name was Agessandros ? No other celebrated sculptor of Greece with name ending in andros corresponds to the period of time when Antiochia was built, or flourished. Count Clarac, who was the first to write a book on the Venus, was much puzzled with this andros. " I fancied, at first," says Clara; " it was Agessander, but that I found it could not be, because Agessander was a Rhodian artist." Clarac's argument is not decisive. Apollonius and 1'auriscns, the authors of the Toro Farnese of Naples, were called Rhodian sculptors, though horn, like this Agessauder, in Carla. Praxiteles was styled a Parian artist, though born in Attica, and so forth. Agessander may probably have flourished in the Island of Rhodes, but, like a grateful, generous son, when he wrought his triumphant goddess of Milo, he stamped the marble with his name and birth- place, that his dear Antiochia might share part of his fame. Good old Plutarch retired from Rome and all his well-earned honours to his native Chmronea, giving this as a reason that, being born in a small city, he would not make it less by deserting it.
The French may well rejoice at learning that they now possess a beauteous sister and a noble brother of the glorious Laocoon, which, when it stood in the imperial palace of the virtuous Titus, Pliny pre- ferred to all other works, whose learned praise has since been con- firmed by the great Michael Angelo, the unrivalled Raphael, and three succeeding centuries.
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