On with her head!

For the first time in possibly 170 years, a Roman marble statue of Venus will be reunited with its head. Both pieces are going to the Michael C. Carlos Museum at Emory University, where conservators will piece them back together.

The museum bought the charmingly prudish portrait of the goddess of love — called Aphrodite by the Greeks and Venus by the Romans — for $968,000 at a Sotheby's auction in New York on June 6. A private collector in Houston, Texas, agreed to sell the head at auction to the buyer of the body. The head, which sold for about $50,000, was last documented attached to the body in 1836.

Posted by David on June 15, 2006 11:37 AM