GREECE CULTURES-VENUS DE MILO
-VENUS DE MILO In the Hellenistic period, sculptors regularly followed Praxiteles’ lead in undressing Aphrodite, but they also openly explored the eroticism of the nude female form. The famous Venus de Milo (FIG. 5-83) is a larger-than-life-size marble statue of Aphrodite found on Melos together with its inscribed base (now lost) signed by the sculptor, Alexandros of Antioch-on-the-Meander. In this statue, the goddess of love is more modestly draped than the Aphrodite of Knidos (FIG. 5-62) but is more overtly sexual. Her left hand (separately preserved) holds the apple Paris awarded her when he judged her the most beautiful goddess of all. Her right hand may have lightly grasped the edge of her drapery near the left hip in a halfhearted attempt to keep it from slipping farther down her body. The sculptor intentionally designed the work to tease the spectator, imbuing his partially draped Aphrodite with a sexuality absent from Praxiteles’ entirely nude image of the goddess.