The famous Venus de Milo takes her name from the island Melos, called Milo by French cartographers, where she was discovered in 1820. The marquis de Rivière, French ambassador in Greece, then acquired the sculpture before offering it to king Louis XVIII the next year. That is how she arrived at the Louvre museum in 1821, in a red marble room she has hardly ever left since.
She was originally painted with various colors and adorned with jewels, just like every sculpture of the time, even if it all disappeared through the centuries. There are some holes on her head so she used to wear a tiara.
