Wikipedia (
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"Aphrodite of Milos... better known as the Venus de Milo, is an ancient Greek statue and one of the most famous works of ancient Greek sculpture. Created at some time between 130 and 100 BC, it is believed to depict Aphrodite the Greek goddess of love and beauty (Venus to the Romans). It is a marble sculpture, slightly larger than life size at 203 cm (6 ft 8 in) high. The arms and original plinth were lost following the discovery. From an inscription that was on its plinth, it is thought to be the work of Alexandros of Antioch; earlier, it was mistakenly attributed to the master sculptor Praxiteles. It is currently on permanent display at the Louvre Museum in Paris...
Although the Aphrodite of Milos is widely renowned for the mystery of her missing arms enough evidence remains to prove that the right arm of the statue was lowered across the torso with the right hand resting on her raised left knee so it would seem to hold the sliding drapery wrapped around the hips and legs in place.[citation needed] There is a filled hole below her right breast that originally contained a metal tenon that would have supported the separately carved right arm.
The left arm was held out below the eye level of the statue, above a herm and held an apple. The right side of the statue is worked more carefully and finished in greater detail than the left side or back, indicating that the statue was intended to be viewed in profile from its right. The left hand would have held the apple up into the air further back inside the niche the statue was set in. When the left hand was still attached, it would have been clear to an observer that the goddess was looking at the apple she held up in her left hand.
The statue would have been painted, as was the Greek custom for statuary, adorned with jewellery, and positioned in a niche inside a gymnasium. The painting of the statue along with the bedecking in jewellery were intended to make it appear more lifelike. Today, all traces of any paint have disappeared and the only signs of the armbands, necklace, earrings and crown are attachment holes.
As for the planet Venus, Wikipedia (
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"Venus is the second planet from the Sun, orbiting it every 224.7 Earth days. The planet is named after Venus, the Roman goddess of love and beauty. After the Moon, it is the brightest natural object in the night sky, reaching an apparent magnitude of -4.6, bright enough to cast shadows. Because Venus is an inferior planet from Earth, it never appears to venture far from the Sun: its elongation reaches a maximum of 47.8°. Venus reaches its maximum brightness shortly before sunrise or shortly after sunset, for which reason it has been known as the Morning Star or Evening Star.
Venus is classified as a terrestrial planet and it is sometimes called Earth's "sister planet" owing to their similar size, gravity, and bulk composition. Venus is covered with an opaque layer of highly reflective clouds of sulfuric acid, preventing its surface from being seen from space in visible light. Venus has the densest atmosphere of all the terrestrial planets in the Solar System, consisting of mostly carbon dioxide. The atmospheric pressure at the planet's surface is 92 times that of the Earth. Venus has no carbon cycle to lock carbon back into rocks and surface features, nor does it seem to have any organic life to absorb it in biomass. Venus is believed to have previously possessed oceans, but these evaporated as the temperature rose owing to the runaway greenhouse effect. The water has most probably photodissociated, and, because of the lack of a planetary magnetic field, the free hydrogen has been swept into interplanetary space by the solar wind. Venus's surface is a dry desertscape with many slab-like rocks, periodically refreshed by volcanism."