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

Cover shows signs of wear (see photos)
Interior: very good condition

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

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 renowned photographers such as Richard Avedon, Irving Penn or Marco Glaviano. Dino Risi noticed her photo in a magazine and gave her her first role in the TV movie Vita coi figli.

In the 1990s she shifted toward cinema, where she began in the role of one of Dracula’s three companions in Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula. She became known in France with L’Appartement (1996), by Gilles Mimouni, for which she was nominated for the Césars in the Best Young Actress category. It was on the set of this romance that she met Vincent Cassel, her future husband. In 2000, she starred in Malena by Giuseppe Tornatore, an Oscar nominee, then in The Brotherhood of the Wolf. She appeared in Gaspar Noé’s I Stand Alone, in competition at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival. This latter role earned her recognition from both critics and the public. In 2006, she appeared in Le Concile de Pierre, and served as a jury member 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 little girl with a full mouth, yet the world-famous star was already recognizable to our eyes. That first photo was the spark. She dreamed of photography, cinema, fashion glossies, mythic Italian stars (Sophia, Gina...). The dream came true, and at eighteen Monica began her modeling career. Her beauty quickly drew the gaze of the world’s greatest photographers, who began to create the icon. Different from other models, set apart from them all. Lively, sensual, carnal, they would make her their heroine. Cinema courted her. Cinema would make her a star. Dino Risi first, Coppola soon after, Tornatore, etc. Rome, Paris, Los Angeles, New York. She becomes the new symbol that Italian cinema offers to the world. This book “travels” all of Monica Bellucci’s paths—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 so loved.