Monica Bellucci bares all as she poses nude in water for Gian Paolo Barbieri’s new Milan exhibition 

Monica Bellucci features in a new photography exhibition celebrating the acclaimed Italian photographer Gian Paolo Barbieri’s life’s work.

One of the key photographs in the exhibition, which has just opened at the 29 Arts in Progress gallery in Milan, shows the the Italian actress and model posing nude in water for Dolce & Gabbana’s 2000 campaign.

Monica, now aged 58, also stars in a docufilm about the 84-year-old photographer’s life, ‘The Man and The Beauty,’ which features some of his other iconic subjects including Eva Herzigova and Donatella Versace.

Muse: Monica Bellucci features in a new photography exhibition celebrating the acclaimed Italian photographer Gian Paolo Barbieri’s life’s work

Alongside the racy nude image, Monica is also seen posing without underwear in sheer lingerie, with a cigarette in her mouth for the same D&G campaign.

The works shown, a mix of unseen portraits and hand painted photographs, also include 1997 shots of Eve Herzigova eating spaghetti and dancing through the cobbled streets of Rome. 

Alongside his work with some of the world’s most iconic supermodels, Barbieri has also created photographs for some of the most famous ad campaigns for Italian and international fashion brands such as Versace, Ferrè, Vivienne Westwood, Dolce & Gabbana, Valentino and Armani.

Model behaviour: Alongside the racy nude image, Monica is also seen posing without underwear in sheer lingerie, with a cigarette in her mouth

Celebrated: Alongside his work with some of the world’s most iconic supermodels, Barbieri has also created photographs for some of the most famous ad campaigns for fashion brands

Speaking about his 60-year career, Barbieri says: ‘I have always loved art, in all its incarnations.’

‘Since I was a child the inspiration of theatre and cinema played an important role. Reading widely, studying classical art, looking to the great masters of the past or simply looking around me at what animated my surroundings, I cultivated my artistic eye.’

‘I imagined or drew in my head that which I would have liked to be the result of this act, constructing my sets meticulously, always citing, more or less explicitly, art, cinema or architecture.’

Acclaimed works: The works shown, a mix of unseen portraits and hand painted photographs, also include shots of Eva Herzigova dancing through Rome’s cobbled streets in 1997

Monica recently said she wants to ‘get old in a peaceful way’ and isn’t ‘obsessed’ with maintaining her figure in her 50s.

The film star shared her thoughts about getting older in an interview with the Sunday Times Style magazine.

She said she prefers wine, pasta, and the occasional Pilates class to grueling workouts and restrictive diets.

‘I am not obsessed. I’ve always been a curvy woman, never so skinny, that’s my nature. And I want to get old in a peaceful way,’ she said.

‘When you are 50 or 60 you don’t have the same needs as when you are 20.

‘You change, like when your baby comes into the room, you see that the first thing is her. We come in second. This gives us another perspective.’

Gian Paolo Barbieri: Unconventional is open at Milan’s 29 Arts in Progress gallery until March 25 2023.

Iconic images: Eva also appears in a 1997 portrait by Barbieri eating spaghetti in a plunging pink gown