The statue was discovered on April 28, 1937, in the hogback of Brizet, a mound to the east of the village Etrat. Ploughing his field,
Forez farmer Jean Gonon discovered a statue buried half a metre from the surface. It was 86 cm and weighed 87 kilograms. It depicted a female, half-draped, with nose, right hand, left arm and lower torso broken off. Gonon notified an amateur archaeologist, Jean Renaud, a member of the local learned society the Diana de Montbrison. At the time, the society was chaired by Noël Thiollier, regional curator of historical monuments. On the basis of photographs sent by another member of the society, the Hellenist Mario Meunier, former secretary of Rodin, experts such as Adrien Blanchet, member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, and Alexandre Philadelpheus, director of the Athens National Archaeological Museum, the statue was dated to the end of the 2nd century CE (the hairstyle reminiscent of the Empress
Faustine the Younger) and it was thought that the neo-Attic
Venus Anadyomene was a Roman copy of a Greek
Aphrodite. As early as November 1938, a journalist from the magazine
Reflets said was the work of a young artist of Italian origin from
Saint-Etienne, Francois Cremonese (1907–2002). He carved the statue in
Tuscan marble (after a plaster maquette modelled on a young Polish woman, Anna Studnicka). He buried his creation on October 9, 1936, without the knowledge of Gonon, to prepare a hoax to publicise his talent. It was declassified by decree of October 21, 1939, == References ==