Giuseppe Tornatore - Monica Bellucci - 2010

Format: Hardcover, 240 pages
Publication date: November 4, 2010
Publisher: La Martinière
Collection: Art And Performance
Illustrations: Black and white and color
Dimensions: 26.4 x 33.7 cm
Condition: good (see photos - dedication + cover creases)

This book gathers the finest shots by photographers inspired by the woman who received the title of the world's most beautiful woman in 2009. Richard Avedon, Dominique Issermann, Peter Lindbergh, Jean-Baptiste Mondino, Bettina Rheims, Paolo Roversi, Oliviero Toscani, Ellen von Unwerth, among others… enchant us with their gaze on Monica Bellucci’s radiant beauty.

Born in 1968, the Italian actress began a modeling career at the age of 16. She quickly graced the covers of major magazines, including Vogue, Elle and Vanity Fair, working in front of cameras of celebrated photographers like Richard Avedon, Irving Penn or Marco Glaviano. Dino Risi noticed her photo in a magazine and entrusted her with her first role in the TV movie Vita coi figli.

She moved in the 1990s toward cinema, where she began in the role of one of the three companions in Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula. She gained fame in France with L’Appartement (1996), by Gilles Mimouni, for which she was nominated for a César in the Best Supporting Actress category. It was during the filming of this romance that she met Vincent Cassel, her future husband. In 2000, she starred in Malèna, by Giuseppe Tornatore (Oscar-nominated), then in The Brotherhood of the Wolf. She appeared in Gaspar Noé’s Irréversible, in competition at the Cannes Film Festival 2002. This latter role earned her recognition from both critics and the public. In 2006, she appeared in Le Concile de Pierre and served on the jury of the 59th Cannes Film Festival. In 2009, she shared the leading role with Sophie Marceau in Marina de Van’s Ne te retourne pas, in official competition at the 62nd Cannes Film Festival.

When Monica Bellucci posed for her first photo, she was still a young girl with full lips, and yet one could already recognize the world star familiar to our gaze. This first photo would be the turning point. She dreamed of photography, cinema, fashion magazine pages, mythical Italian stars (Sophia, Gina…). The dream came true and at eighteen Monica began her modeling career. Her beauty quickly seized the attention of the world’s greatest photographers who began to shape the icon. Different from other models, “set apart” from all. Lively, sensual, carnal, they would make her their heroine. Cinema courted her. Cinema would establish her as a star. Dino Risi first, Coppola very soon, Tornatore, etc. Rome, Paris, Los Angeles, New York. She becomes the new symbol that Italian cinema offers to the world. This book “travels” all the paths of Monica Bellucci, the model, the actress, the muse. It concentrates a part of the facets of this woman who has always been free with her body, her “image”… A woman much loved.