3-052-377 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Venus and Mars at the Louvre Gallery, Paris, 1880. '...a statue of Venus the Victorious, by some unknown sculptor, which we consider to have been the noblest female figure that ever an artist created...was brought to Italy at some period, and is now to be seen in the Galleries of the Louvre at Paris. You may...pass down stairs to the ancient sculpture gallery, at the end of which, in the left-hand corner, stands this marble beauty, a joy for ever to pure and refined taste. They call her the Venus de Milo...By the way, let us not be too certain whether it was by the Romans of the Empire or by the later Italians that this statue was removed from its original place. If we knew the barbarian who had the cruelty to break her arms we would expose him to eternal infamy; but perhaps it was done by accident, in the fall of a temple. At any rate, here is the modern Gallic impersonation of Mars, a queer little French soldier of the Ligne, staring at her colossal form in a ludicrous attitude of wonder. Times are greatly changed with the Olympian divinities since Homer chanted his glorious epic tale of Troy and its superhuman friends and foes. Poetry and the fine arts still keep alive the memory of those dethroned idols of the human imagination'. From "Illustrated London News", 1880.