Venus de Milo in the context of "Louvre"

Hellenistic art is the art of the Hellenistic period generally taken to begin with the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and end with the conquest of the Greek world by the Romans, a process well underway by 146 BC, when the Greek mainland was taken, and essentially ending in 30 BC with the conquest of Ptolemaic Egypt following the Battle of Actium. A number of the best-known works of Greek sculpture belong to this period, including Laocoön and His Sons, Dying Gaul, Venus de Milo, and the Winged Victory of Samothrace. It follows the period of Classical Greek art, while the succeeding Greco-Roman art was very largely a continuation of Hellenistic trends.

The term Hellenistic refers to the expansion of Greek influence and dissemination of its ideas following the death of Alexander – the "Hellenizing" of the world, with Koine Greek as a common language. The term is a modern invention; the Hellenistic World not only included a huge area covering the whole of the Aegean Sea, rather than the Classical Greece focused on the Poleis of Athens and Sparta, but also a huge time range. In artistic terms this means that there is huge variety which is often put under the heading of "Hellenistic Art" for convenience.

Milos or Melos (/ˈmiːlɒs, -loʊs/; Modern Greek: Μήλος, romanized: Mílos, IPA: [ˈmilos]; Ancient Greek: Μῆλος, romanized: Mêlos) is a volcanic Greek island in the Aegean Sea, just north of the Sea of Crete. It is the southwestern-most island of the Cyclades group.

The Venus de Milo (now in the Louvre), the Poseidon of Melos (now in the NAMA) and the Asclepius of Milos (now in the British Museum) were all found on the island, as was an archaic Apollo now in Athens. Milos is a popular tourist destination during the summer. The municipality of Milos also includes the uninhabited offshore islands of Antimilos and Akradies. The combined land area is 160.147 square kilometres (61.833 sq mi) and at the 2021 census the population was 5,193 inhabitants.

Parian marble is a fine-grained, semi translucent, and pure-white marble quarried during the classical era on the Greek island of Paros in the Aegean Sea. A subtype, referred to as Parian lychnites, was particularly notable in antiquity by ancient Greeks as a material for making sculptures.

Some of the greatest masterpieces of ancient Greek sculpture were carved from Parian marble, including the Medici Venus, the Venus de Milo, and the Winged Victory of Samothrace.

Alexandros of Antioch (Greek: Ἀλέξανδρος) (2nd – 1st century BC) was a Greek sculptor of the Hellenistic age. He is thought to be the sculptor of the famous Venus de Milo statue.