Italy returns ancient statue of Venus to Libya

[Merlion]

Good idea for Italy to set its own example when it is campaigning to get the 'stolen' treasures back from more 'powerful' countries.

A very beautiful piece of work.

Italy to return ancient Roman statue of goddess Venus to Libya (http://www.canada.com/topics/entertainment/story.html?id=66a5a66f-a9d9-49e9-a79e-9ab8f31486d7&k=79503)

April 24, 2007, ROME (AP) - Italy will return to Libya an ancient Roman statue taken from its former North African colony, a gesture Rome hopes will help its own campaign to retrieve allegedly looted antiquities from museums worldwide.

The 2nd century statue of the goddess Venus was found in 1913 by Italian troops near the ruins of the Greek and Roman settlement of Cyrene, on the Libyan coast, the Culture Ministry said Tuesday. It is now housed in Rome's National Roman Museum.

http://a123.g.akamai.net/f/123/12465/1d/media.canada.com/cp/travel/20070424/u042401a.jpg

The headless marble figure of the goddess of love is a copy of a Greek statue that has never been found, said Silvana Rizzo, an archaeologist at the ministry.

"When we talk about Roman copies of Hellenistic statues we are talking about very important works, because most of the time they are the only traces of the original works that were later destroyed," she said.

Libyan authorities requested the statue in 1989, but a protracted judicial battle ensued with a group that considered the work part of Italy's cultural heritage. Last week, a court ruled in favour of returning the statue to Tripoli, the ministry said in a statement. No date has been set for the return.

The ruling sets "a useful precedent to promote the return, in favour of Italy, of antiquities that were looted by other states," the ministry said.

Italy is aggressively campaigning to recover antiquities it says were smuggled out of the country and sold to museums worldwide. It also has made some restitution to countries that had their own treasures looted by Italians.

In 2005, Rome returned to Ethiopia the 1,700-year-old Axum obelisk taken in 1937 on the orders of fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.

New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art and Boston's Museum of Fine Arts have agreed to return antiquities to Italy, but negotiations with the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles have been stalled for months. ...

[fritchie]

I'm curious about the forms at the figure's lower right, the whole assembly doubtless present to add stability to the figure's missing right arm and hand. Some of the forms look quite organic - something I don't recall seeing before in Greek or Roman work. The largest of these forms almost looks like a wineskin, which I suppose might accompany a goddess of love. Near the top of this support are several smaller, rounded and partially tubular objects, also, which I can't identify.

I checked Google, but only this image seems to be online anywhere.

[GlennT]

It is difficult to tell from that photo, but the form in the middle of the support resembles the greek depiction of a dolphin, head downwards,with its snout compressed somewhat by its own weight, and the tail unaccountably twisted. I could be way off as well. The dolphin is not usually associated with Venus, if that is in fact who the figure is. But a dolphin would be associated with Arethusa, or with certain localities where the sculpture may have been made, such as Syracuse, Sicily or Taras, Tarentum.
The rest of the support looks like drapery draped over the "dolphin" shape.
Better pictures or a different angle would help.

[Merlion]

I agree Glenn, after you pointed it out, that it does look like a dolphin with its head at the bottom.

Here is another view, a frontal view, taken from the link below.

http://media.bonnint.net/apimage/ROM15104241404.jpg

Italy to Return Ancient Statue to Libya (http://www.wtopnews.com/?nid=105&sid=1123834&sidelines=1)

I've found yet another view from another angle. But perhaps the above is enough.

[StevenW]

Hmm, interesting as it does look like a dolphin, but the traditional old world nude would suggests Venus usually in a state of bathing. In ancient times bathing was not something taken for granted like it is in our daily shower routine society. If you wanted to get clean you couldn't just turn the faucet on, you had to go fill a big heavy jug from a well or river and drag it back to your dweilling and often, share it, eldest to youngest etc...

I beleive it is a water jug, dolphin or otherwise. The other possibility would be Eros, often associated with Venus and perhaps crouching in awe of her beauty while holding her garments off the ground... Just a thought..

[fritchie]

I now agree with GlennT and others that the "wineskin" actually is a dolphin of some sort, but I suspect the sculptor may not have been very familiar with this animal. The nose certainly is quite blunt, actually flat, but the second image shows no clear reason why that should be, at the bottom of the sculpture in a fairly protected location. On the off-chance that it is not the common bottlenose dolphin, I Googled for "Mediterranean Dolphin", and found the species name "Coryphaena hippuras". This "dolphin" is endangered and occurs mainly in the eastern Mediterranean, a logical location for it to have been the subject of this figure. However, the reference
http://darwin.zoology.gla.ac.uk/~rpage/ispecies/?q=Coryphaena+hippurus&submit=Go
shows several images of this species, and it in fact clearly is not a dolphin but a fish. It has quite a blunt head, but also fins on the back like most fish, and a double tail of the sort that appears draped near the top of the sculpture's leg support.
Perhaps the original sculptor just used license in the absence of accurate knowledge when he added this animal. Early European paintings of exotic animals, even by excellent painters, show similar oddities. Pictures elsewhere of the bottlenose dolphin show that its tail is not double, as with this fish, but a broad wedge shape.

Also, since the top of the support is complete, I was mistaken in assuming that the right hand lay there. It is a general support for the upper mass of the figure.

[sculptor]

mythology
for Venus, think Aphrodite
and in other settings the statue in question was described as Aphrodite with dolphin.

Aphrodite born of the sea foam
the last of the titans
her attributes included the dolphin and she was commonly depicted with her dolphin /dolphins and swans and.....

According to Hesiod(theogony), she was born when Uranus was castrated by Cronus who threw the severed genitals over his shoulder and into the ocean which began to churn and foam about them. From the aphros ("sea foam") arose Aphrodite,
see:
http://www.eternalegypt.org/images/elements/13260_310x310.jpg
www.theoi.com/image/S10.13Aphrodite.jpg
http://www.vroma.org/images/mcmanus_images/venus_dolphin.jpg

in another depiction, (which i can't find now)she was seen riding a sea shell chariot with 4 dolphins harnessed as horses

[fritchie]

Sculptor - I never had looked into her name, but my Webster's confirms that aphros means foam, and goes further to say Aphrodite (the name) is of Oriental origiin. Vicinity of modern Turkey, I presume. I've seen it stated many times that the Greek pantheon as we know it probably is of mixed origins, just as the Norse pantheon is a mix of two groupings.