Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but Art is in the eye of administrators.
After Waterloo, the Louvre had a problem. It was required to return the Apollo Belvedere to the Vatican and the Venus de’ Medici to Florence. At the same time, Lord Elgin had just sold his marbles to the UK government, having rejected bids over previous years including, it is said, one from Napoleon.
National pride sits ill on an empty plinth, and the French did not dither when, on 8 April 1820, a new Venus was uncovered on the island of Melos. But and sensibly, they managed to wrangle a quittance out of the local officials that has stood France in better stead than the UK over claims of patrimony.
For over two hundred years, the Venus de Milo has been the world’s Venus, a triumph of branding by the Louvre.
