The statue’s subject and pose is an often-copied one, with similar version appearing in famous paintings and sculpture gardens in Europe and beyond for centuries. The statue itself is thought to be based on an earlier Aphrodite sculpture in marble by the ancient Athenian sculptor Praxiteles. However, the direct progenitor of the Venus de Medici was made of the more lightweight bronze.

While the Venus de Milo is missing its arms, the Venus de Medici is an intact sculpture. Both famous Venuses have heads and may have been adorned with jewelry made of precious metals. Neither currently has paint or a cryptic inscription, although they do feature translatable Greek lettering at their bases.

Having been sculpted around 100 BCE, the Venus de Milo is a famous sculpture dating to the Hellenistic era. It was originally thought to have been sculpted during the Classical era, but its elaborate draping, spiral composition, revival of classical touches, and perfect three-dimensionality make it a quintessential example of Hellenistic sculpture.

Image citation: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e0/Venus_de_Milo_Louvre_Ma399_n2.jpg

Like many Hellenistic sculptures, the Venus de Milo is made of marble. Specifically, it was carved from white marble believed to have been quarried in Paros, Greece. Ivory and plaster of Paris were not materials used in ancient Greek sculpture.

Image citation: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e0/Venus_de_Milo_Louvre_Ma399_n2.jpg

The Venus de Milo is generally agreed to represent Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love and beauty. (A small minority of scholars believe that the statue in fact represents Amphitrite, a goddess of the sea.) Gods and goddesses such as Zeus, Hades, Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite were very popular subjects of not only Hellenistic but also Archaic and Classical Greek artworks.

Image citation: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e0/Venus_de_Milo_Louvre_Ma399_n2.jpg

The Venus de Milo displayed in Paris’s Louvre museum is famously missing its original marble arms and plinth. It’s also missing the polychromatic paint and gold or silver jewelry that would have adorned it. A cartouche, on the other hand, is an oval engraving containing hieroglyphs that spell out a person’s name, and it is specific to the art of ancient Egypt.

Image citation: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e0/Venus_de_Milo_Louvre_Ma399_n2.jpg

The Discobolus of Myron, named for the Athenian sculptor Myron, dates to the Early Classical period (also described as the Severe style). The statue was created between 480 and 440 BCE. Like many Early Classical works, it is defined by its simple, un-ornate aesthetic, its use of bronze, and its fairly novel portrayal of human emotion and action. The statue is further distinguished as Early Classical by the sculptor’s desire to depict a person in motion, a human moment frozen in time.

This famous mask is named after the legendary ancient Greek King Agamemnon (see Homer’s Iliad and Aeschylus’s Oresteia). While Tutankhamen’s burial mask is similarly resplendent, the Egyptian burial mask was stylistically much different from the ancient Greek. King Tut’s in particular featured a long, cylindrical beard, lapis lazuli, and turquoise in addition to the gold. The other three masks are fictional objects (but denote historical figures).

(Image accessed through Wikipedia Image Commons: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c8/MaskOfAgamemnon.jpg)

The famous mask of Agamemnon (c. 1500s BCE) was discovered in Mycenae in the 1800s. While early discoverers thought the mask belonged to the Greek King Agamemnon (see Homer’s Iliad and Aeschylus’s Oresteia), later scholarship revealed that the mask actually predated the historical Agamemnon by centuries. The Mycenaean civilization predated the Archaic era and was itself predated by the Minoan civilization.

(Image accessed through Wikipedia Image Commons: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c8/MaskOfAgamemnon.jpg)

Like other ancient Greek masks, the mask of Agamemnon would have been used to cover the face of a ruler during a funeral and interment. It was discovered covering the face of a body in a burial shaft and was accompanied by weapons, jewelry, and other artifacts. Later, in ancient Rome, wax casts and stone would replace gold as the choice for funerary masks and portraiture.

(Image accessed through Wikipedia Image Commons: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c8/MaskOfAgamemnon.jpg)