Gregory Curtis Read online

  The farmer’s only interest in the statue was what money he could get for it. But Voutier, though he had to contain himself as best he could, knew that this was an experience granted to very few. He was in the presence of a masterpiece that no one had seen for almost two thousand years. Here, in a buried niche on a minor island, was a work of art that was a culminating expression of the Greek genius. It had been reborn before his eyes, and now it stood there in full glory for him to contemplate. Voutier later wrote a single sentence to describe these first few moments: “Those who have seen the Venus de Milo are able to understand my stupefaction.”

  As soon as he had recovered from his astonishment, Voutier turned his attention to practical matters. To prevent a fall, the top half was removed and placed on the ground beside the lower half. Now it was time to try to claim the statue before anyone else was able to, preferably even before anyone else knew about it. Voutier hurried to the small town at the top of the hill about fifteen minutes from the ruins. There he found the only representative of the French government on the island, a viceconsul named Louis Brest.

  After about thirty minutes Voutier arrived back at the niche with Vice-consul Brest in tow. While Voutier was gone, the farmer, whose name was Yorgos, had had enough time to make a thorough search of the small enclosure. He found a marble hand holding an apple, a piece of a badly mutilated arm, and two herms. Herms are quadrangular pillars about three feet high with a carved head at the top. Their purpose is no longer clear, but apparently they were usually used as some sort of boundary marker. One herm had the head of a bearded man, and the other the head of a young man. Each one was standing in an inscribed base.

  Voutier had brought a sketch pad and a pencil with him on his digging expedition, and now he set to work on what would turn out to be four drawings: one of the upper half of the statue, one of the lower half, and one of each herm in its inscribed base. He copied the two inscriptions clearly enough to be read. His plan was to use the drawings to convince the captain of the Estafette to take the statue on board.

  While he was drawing Voutier prodded Brest to buy the statue. Yorgos had decided he wanted four hundred piasters for it, about the price of a good donkey. Brest was a rotund, methodical person, thirty-one years old, who tried to maintain the dignity of his office by wearing a blue uniform with gold braid. The sudden exertion of getting to the site, the close atmosphere inside the small niche, the ancient dust that had just been disturbed and was still floating in the air, the play of light and shadows on the statue and the oddly painted brick walls—all that was too much for Vice-consul Brest. Besides, he had no official budget. If he were to buy the statue, he would have to do so with his own money and then hope to be reimbursed by the French government. While that might happen, it also might not. “Are you sure,” he whispered to Voutier, “that it’s worth that much? Please don’t make me risk losing my money.”

  Voutier’s drawings of the Venus de Milo done on Melos (illustration credit 1.2)

  With that Voutier left the vice-consul behind and returned with his drawings to the Estafette. (Voutier ordered the two sailors to bury the artifacts they had found before he approached Yorgos. He was never able to return for them. It’s possible they remain buried on Melos to this day.) On board he showed the drawings to his captain, a certain Robert, an intense, demanding officer known to his crew, more out of respect than fear, as Robert the Devil. Voutier tried to persuade him to sail immediately for Constantinople to get authorization from the French ambassador there to buy the statue. The drawings impressed Robert, but he had orders to wait at Melos. He couldn’t ignore them because of the sudden enthusiasm of an ensign for a statue.

  Voutier now gave up in frustration. That was how the navy was these days; perhaps under the emperor it would have been different. (Voutier was a passionate Bonapartist.) Now, his initial enthusiasm thwarted, he seems to have lost all interest in the statue and remained silently in the background during the events that followed. He put his drawings away with his personal effects, and though he guarded them through his long and adventurous life, it would be fifty years before he revealed them publicly.

  Sulfur and vampires

  MELOS appeared during some distant epoch when a volcano erupted underneath the sea and left a thin strip of land about twelve miles long with a wide opening in its northwest corner. The sea flows from there into a round bay that was once the crater of the volcano. The water is deep, and the bay, almost four miles across, is protected on all sides, making Melos the best natural harbor in the eastern Mediterranean.

  As inviting as the harbor is, the land itself is unwelcoming. Melos is a large, hollow rock riddled with caverns, crevices, and catacombs. The seawater flows in and out, leaving behind salts and other minerals that combine with iron ore left from the volcanic explosion to produce smoldering fires. In former times these fires in turn ignited the sulfur, which was once abundant and had a beautiful greenish tint. The hot sulfur formed noxious clouds that fouled the water in the few springs and gave the air in the low areas a horrible stench.

  For generations the principal town was in the lowlands, but by the late eighteenth century the air and water there had become so pernicious that the inhabitants were prone to contract painful or even fatal diseases. At Castro, on the side of the tallest hill on the island, the air was better and the water didn’t taste of sulfur. Most of the population moved there, but it was a long climb up from the harbor that could take more than an hour. The road, such as it was, had been covered with volcanic soil that was principally tiny pieces of black glass. The footing was unsure, and each step caused a long, annoying crunch.

  Melos has been continuously occupied for about six thousand years. Even before the classical age of Greece it was home to certain cult religions that seem to have been imported from Crete. There was silver there once, and high-quality alum, which had myriad medicinal uses in the ancient world. The weak and infirm made pilgrimages to the hot sulfur springs, and even healthy Greeks would come and drink deeply of the water to purge themselves.

  During all those six thousand years only two events have turned the attention of the world to Melos. The first occurred in the winter of 416–415 B.C., during the Peloponnesian War, when an Athenian invasion force landed on the island. Melos had allied itself with Sparta against Athens. After a brief siege, the invaders conquered the island, put all the men to death, and sold the women and children into slavery. The Athenians then sent a colony of their own citizens to settle on the island.

  Even this bloody episode would be forgotten if Thucydides in his History had not dramatized a council between the Athenian leaders and the leading citizens of Melos. The Athenians demanded complete surrender and a yearly tribute; in return, they pledged not to murder the men or enslave the women and children. The islanders refused in the vain hope that they could hold out long enough to be rescued by the Spartans and thus preserve their independence. The dramatization, known as the Melian Dialogue, is a staple in college introductory political science classes. It subtly shows that even those who are doomed militarily still have political power, since the Athenians really had no interest in murdering and enslaving the entire population. All they wanted was allegiance in the form of a tribute. That left room for negotiation about the terms and amount of the tribute and any other aspects of the surrender. The Melians’ failure to understand what power they had despite their military weakness led to disaster.

  The second notable event in the history of Melos was the discovery of the Venus de Milo in the spring of 1820.

  About four thousand people lived on Melos then. They were constantly in the grip of fears both real and imagined. The real fear was of the brutal whims of the despotic Turks who ruled them. The imagined fear was of ghosts, goblins, vampires, and other spooks. Every act of ordinary life was riddled with superstition. Before childbirth every door, chest, and window that could be locked with a key had to be opened in order to prevent a difficult delivery. Once labor began, no one present co
uld leave and no one could come in. After childbirth a woman had immediately to step on something iron to make her and the infant strong. Also she couldn’t let a star shine on her, or both she and the infant would die. Similar superstitions ruled courtship, marriage, the wedding night, child rearing, medical prevention and cures, and of course death and burial.

  In particular, the people of the Aegean islands believed in vampires. When anyone died without apparent cause, the assumption was that a vampire was roaming the island by night and returning to the grave only by day. Recently buried bodies were disinterred to identify the vampire, because supposedly, a vampire’s corpse didn’t decompose. As it happens, corpses buried on the islands were often slow to decompose because of the salts in the volcanic soil. A preserved corpse became proof that the vampire really existed. After prayers by everyone as they gathered around the body, followed by incantations from the priest, the body was burned to extinguish the vampire.

  Many of these superstitions, like so much else in life on Melos, had survived from classical times. In both eras, the inhabitants lived with their superstitious fears and their fears of distant powers and marauding pirates. Their droning folk music with its exotic time signatures—8/5, for example—was apparently little changed from ancient times. The same was true of wine making, cheese making, cotton spinning, and other domestic arts. And like their distant ancestors, the people of Melos still kept weasels as pets. The old theater may have been in ruins, but otherwise the sights and sounds of ancient Greece and 1820 Melos were surprisingly similar.

  The hand with an apple

  ON MELOS, as in every remote community, people were compulsively absorbed in the lives of their neighbors. News of the discovery of the extraordinary statue spread instantaneously throughout the island. Local opportunities offered Yorgos money for the sculpture in the hope of selling it again for profit. Even more bothersome, the local government, which was a group of three men known as primates, shouldered its way into the affair. In small towns the most powerful citizens are the ones with the most money or land, and the minister of the leading church. It was no different in the Greek islands. The rich, the landowners, and the Greek Orthodox priest, who was often wealthy himself, became the primates. They seem to have been an extralegal institution. Apparently, they chose their members at their own discretion and then shuffled themselves in and out of the official governing council of three men that enforced the local laws.

  The primates told Yorgos that they had the authority to choose the buyer he must sell to. That was a terrible development for Vice-consul Brest. What if the primates insisted that Yorgos sell to someone who wasn’t French? Brest’s position as the representative of France gave him a certain amount of respect on the island and, at his request, the primates promised not to sell the statue to anyone until he had received instructions from his superiors.

  Despite this promise, Brest feared that if he didn’t act quickly, the statue would surely slip out of French hands. The obvious solution was for him to buy it himself. But if he did and it turned out to be worthless, he would have wasted his money. On the other hand, if it was a masterpiece and he allowed it to fall into the clutches of another nation, he would receive all the blame. At the very least he would never become full consul, a promotion and recognition he deeply coveted and believed he deserved. Why hadn’t he bought the thing from Yorgos when he’d had the chance!

  Brest was a French citizen and patriot who had never seen France. His grandfather and father had been vice-consul on Melos for decades before him. In 1780 Charles-Sigisbert Sonnini, a young Frenchman traveling in Greece and Turkey at the behest of Louis XVI, encountered Brest’s grandfather, whom he described as an excellent man who had the esteem of the French navy, the European merchants in the region, and the Turks. The Greeks of Melos, Sonnini said, venerated him: “The flag of France, which flies above his house, however isolated and without any protection, was nowhere more respected.” And how had France repaid his service and fine character in the twilight years of his life? “He has the misfortune of seeing himself reduced to nothing more than an agent of the consul in Smyrna.”

  Forty years later his grandson was still under the authority of the French consul in Smyrna, a city far across the Aegean at the end of a bay on the coast of Turkey. Brest’s isolation on the island and the neglect of both him and his grandfather by the nation he loved had left him, like a spurned suitor, cautious at best and bitter at worst. And his life was often one of misery. Just a few years earlier, when he was in his late twenties, he had brought a young bride from Constantinople to live with him. When a pirate named Franco Poulo and his fifty men landed on Melos to loot and kidnap young girls, the newlyweds had to run for their lives, and Brest’s bride came close to being captured. The comte de Forbin, who had just become director of the Louvre, happened to visit Brest and his wife at their home in 1817 while on a voyage in search of antiquities for the museum. Forbin was touched by their eager hospitality, but he recorded how people from the “miserable” town stared at him through the open doorway while he consumed “bad bread, fruit, and passable wine.”

  In his present dilemma about the statue, Brest could turn only to the few other Frenchmen in positions of authority on Melos. These were the captains and officers of the vessels in the harbor. On April 9, the day after Voutier made his discovery, Brest asked Robert the Devil from the Estafette and Captain Duval d’Ailly of the Lionne, a ship that sailed with the Estafette, to come see the statue.

  To protect his treasure, Yorgos had carted the upper, more valuable half of the statue to his cowshed, along with the two herms and their inscribed bases, the arm fragments, and the hand with the apple. Brest and the two captains went to Yorgos’s farm and tramped past the animals and through the straw and thick manure in his cowshed to see the new discovery. The captains advised Brest to buy it, although that was probably not what he was hoping to hear. A negative opinion would have helped him justify not risking his money.

  The next day, April 10, two other French vessels, the Bonite and the Emulation, arrived at Melos. Brest took their commanders to the cowshed immediately. On April 11, Captain Dauriac of the Bonite wrote a letter to Pierre David in Smyrna, the French consul general in the Levant who was Brest’s superior. This letter is the first written description of the Venus de Milo after its discovery:

  Three days ago a peasant who was digging in his field found a white marble statue representing Venus receiving the apple of Paris. She is larger than life-size. At the moment we have only the bust down to the waist. I have been to see her. The head appears well conserved to me as well as the hair. The end of one of the breasts is broken. The peasant was told that the discovery that he made was of great value and he believes it now because there are people who have already offered him one thousand piasters. M. Brest … asked me for advice about the statue, but I am not able to give him any, not knowing anything about the subject.

  The next day, April 12, Brest himself wrote a letter to David to alert him to the discovery. He said that the statue was “a little mutilated; the arms are broken off and she is separated in two pieces at the waist.” He describes the work as “Venus holding the apple of discord in her hand.”

  Both men seem to be referring to the hand holding an apple that was among the bits and pieces Yorgos found in the niche with the statue and put with the rest of the fragments in the cowshed. Its marble and dimensions were consistent with the statue’s. And, as both Dauriac and Brest seem to have known, Greek statues of Venus often showed her holding an apple. The apple is the central symbol in the myth of how the Trojan War began. When the mortal Peleus and the goddess Thetis were married, the only goddess who wasn’t invited was Discord. For revenge she threw a golden apple with the inscription “For the fairest” among the guests. Juno, Venus, and Minerva each claimed that the apple was meant for her. Jupiter saw nothing but trouble for himself if he chose any one of the three above the others, so he sent the goddesses to Mount Ida, where Paris, the mos
t beautiful mortal man, was tending flocks of sheep. Each goddess appeared before him and tried to bribe him to choose her. Juno promised power and wealth. Minerva promised triumph in war. But Venus promised the most beautiful woman on earth for his wife. That decided Paris. He chose Venus and gave her the apple. The most beautiful woman on earth turned out to be Helen, the wife of Menelaus, king of Sparta. Venus helped Paris persuade Helen to leave with him for Troy. The Greeks united to bring Helen back, and the Trojan War began.

  The ambitious ensign

  ALONG with Voutier’s sketches, Dauriac’s letter, and Brest’s letter, there is a fourth description of the statue from the days that followed its discovery. Its author, an ensign in the French navy who was just a month shy of his thirtieth birthday, had arrived on April 16 aboard a ship named the Chevrette. During the next ten years he would emerge from obscurity to become one of the most famous men in Europe. His rise began in Melos when he appropriated for himself the credit for discovering the Venus de Milo.

  This ensign was the driven, indomitable, and peculiar Jules Sébastien-César Dumont d’Urville. Although he languished through his twenties as a junior officer without connections, he eventually became a rear admiral. He led three voyages around the world, during which he explored the coasts of Australia, New Zealand, and New Guinea as well as many islands in Polynesia. He established the first French presence in Antarctica. His accounts of these voyages became publishing sensations and were translated into a number of languages (although not English), thus spreading his fame throughout Europe. His work in botany earned him membership in learned societies, as did his philological studies on the languages of Oceania.