Venus de Milo (c-115). Marble. 202. The Venus de Milo is an ancient Greek statue and one of the most famous works of ancient Greek sculpture. Initially it was attributed to the sculptor Praxiteles, but based on an inscription that was on its plinth, the statue is now thought to be the work of Alexandros of Antioch. Created sometime between 130 and 100 BC, the statue is believed to depict Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love and beauty. However, some scholars claim it is the sea-goddess Amphitrite, venerated on Milos. It is a marble sculpture, slightly larger than life size at 203 cm high. Part of an arm and the original plinth were lost following the statue's discovery. It is currently on permanent display at the Louvre Museum in Paris. The statue is named after Aphrodite's Roman name, Venus, and the Greek island of Milos, where it was discovered. The Venus de Milo's arms are missing, for unknown reasons. There is a filled hole below her right breast that originally contained a metal tenon that would have supported the separately carved right arm. It is generally asserted that the Venus de Milo was discovered on 8 April 1820 by a peasant named Yorgos Kentrotas, inside a buried niche within the ancient city ruins of Milos. Milos is the current village of Trypiti, on the island of Milos in the Aegean, which was then a part of the Ottoman Empire. Elsewhere, the discoverers are identified as Yorgos Bottonis and his son Antonio. Paul Carus gave the site of discovery as the ruins of an ancient theater in the vicinity of Castro, the capital of the island, adding that Bottonis and his son came accidentally across a small cave, carefully covered with a heavy slab and concealed, which contained a fine marble statue in two pieces, together with several other marble fragments. This happened in February, 1820. He apparently based these assertions on an article he had read in the Century Magazine. The Australian historian Edward Duyker, citing a letter written by Louis Brest who was the French consul in Milos in 1820, asserts the discoverer of the statue was Theodoros Kendrotas and that he has been confused with his younger son Giorgios who later claimed credit for the find. Duyker asserts that Kendrotas was taking stone from a ruined chapel on the edge of his property-terraced land that had once formed part of a Roman gymnasium-and that he discovered an oblong cavity some 1.2 x 1.5 metres deep in the volcanic tuff. It was in this cavity, which had three wings, that Kendrotas first noticed the upper part of the statue. Notwithstanding these anomalies, the consensus is that the statue was found in two large pieces along with several herms, fragments of the upper left arm and left hand holding an apple, and an inscribed plinth. In 1871, during the Paris Commune uprising, many public buildings were burned. The Venus de Milo statue was secreted out of the Louvre Museum in an oak crate and hidden in the basement of the Prefecture of Police. Although the Prefecture was burned, the statue survived undamaged. In 1920, sculptor Robert Ingersoll Aitken created a stir when he criticized the display, lighting, and placement of the statue of Venus de Milo in the museum. In the autumn of 1939, the statue was packed for removal from the Louvre in anticipation of the outbreak of war. Scenery trucks from the Comedie-Francaise transported the Louvre's masterpieces to safer locations in the countryside. During World War II, the statue was sheltered safely in the Chateau de Valencay, along with the Winged Victory of Samothrace and Michelangelo's Slaves.