Venus de Milo, c. 130 BCE – Porcelain Art Mug

The Venus de Milo was discovered in 1820 by a peasant farmer on the Aegean island of Milos, buried in the ruins of an ancient theatre. Within months it had been acquired by the French ambassador to the Ottoman court and presented to Louis XVIII, who donated it to the Louvre — where it has remained ever since, drawing more visitors than almost any other object in the museum. Created sometime between 130 and 100 BCE, the statue is carved from Parian marble in two main sections joined at the hips; its subject is almost certainly Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love and beauty, though the missing arms have made certain identification impossible. That ambiguity has proved central to the work's long afterlife.

By the nineteenth century the Venus de Milo had become the exemplar of classical Greek beauty — the standard against which all other representations of the female form were measured. Its influence on Western aesthetics was enormous, and the discovery of its missing arms has been the subject of speculation and fantasy for two centuries. What is beyond dispute is the statue's formal intelligence: the slight rotation of the torso against the lower body, the barely suggested spiral of the composition, the way the drapery pools at the hips to anchor an otherwise floating figure. It is both ideal and specific, remote and intensely present.

The mug takes her in profile, head bowed, against a dark ground — the view from her right side, which is the one the Louvre lets you have when the room is full and you cannot stand in front of her.

Fine porcelain, 10 oz — 104 mm high, 75 mm across the base. The image runs around the body; handle and rim stay white. Dishwasher and microwave safe.

Venus de Milo (Aphrodite of Milos), c. 130–100 BCE, Parian marble, H. 2.02 m. Musée du Louvre, Paris, Ma 399 (LL 299). The statue is in the public domain; the photograph reproduced here was made by Marie-Lan Nguyen in 2007 and released by her into the public domain.

Selected by Dr. Walther Fuchs for the Tazzarte collection.