Arms and the Woman

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 416, 13 June 1947, Page 19

Arms and the Woman

WAS always under the impression that the original posture of the hands and arms of the Venus de Milo was one of those Unsolved Mysteries; but I found the subject discussed recently under the title "This Actually Happened." It seems that the writer of this script must somewhere have come upon a clue,'for we found him telling us that she was in such and such a _ position, with her hands held so and so, and in her hands he placed an apple (or was it a rose?-TI forget’the exact details), It is perhaps strange thet I should have been mildly irritated by this revelation. Yet I wanted to snub the microphone with a curt "What of it?" Indeed, who wants to know what the statue was originally like? Venus de Milo has become so familiar and dear to the public that any tampering with her broken beauty seems a sacrilege; paradoxically, she is more perfect in her present form than any imagined restoration can make her. No mental picture of her arms would add anything to the value of her beauty; and although the story of the finding and mutilation of the statue was interesting, it wasn’t necessary to suggest to the listener a visual image of original perfection. (It seems she was smashed by opposing factions when two ambassadors of different countries both wanted to buy her). To place imaginary arms on the Venus de Milo is, in my opinion, as superfluous as holding a guessing competition to discover what caused the smile on the face of the Mona Lisa.