Birthday Venus: Monica Bellucci

It is Agent DVD's birthday today so we have to post a picture of his ideal woman: Monica Bellucci who, we have to say, is an excellent choice.

Monica does not appear in this year's FHM 100 Sexiest Women in the World list which tells you everything you need to know about its worth.

Happy birthday Agent DVD!

Venus from the Rear: The Italian female culo by Serpieri

We have already looked at some of Italian comic-book artist Serpieri's illustrations over on our Seduction of Venus blog.

To tie in with our current theme featuring ladies (and, especially, Italian ladies) posteriors we thought we would post some more of his engagingly overripe figures.

Certainly as regards bottom worship Serpieri is to comic books what Tinto Brass is to cinema.  The fact that both are Italian cannot be a coincidence!

Most of these pictures are of his comic book heroine Druuna who has something of the nineteen sixties Playboy Playmate about her.

Certainly she has an most impressive bust/waist/hip ratio!

During the late nineteen eighties and early nineties Triple P spent a lot of time in Italy on business.  We had a number of Italian "girlfriends", for want of a better word, but most of them were slight in stature (Roman girls, we found, were often tiny) and we didn't particularly register any notable posteriors.

It wasn't until we spent a month in Rome one very hot August that we came across (so to speak) our first splendid Italian culo.  One Friday our Italian colleague had taken us to lunch with an Italian lady business woman (there were far more women involved in Triple P's area of business in Italy than in London, we should note).

It was extremely hot, around 100 degrees, and Triple P and his other colleague from London had been warned that after lunch, which we took on the terrace of her splendid house not far from the Coliseum, we would be required to swim in her pool (we had to take our swimming things with us) and that she would probably take her bikini top off.  Triple P remembered thinking that this didn't sound too arduous although our older colleague was terrified.

Indeed, everything happened just as Triple P's Italian colleague predicted and after really quite a lot of chilled red Frascati (which Triple P had never had before) we did end up in the pool with the topless business lady.  She was older that Triple P, who was in his late twenties, but probably only about forty although that seemed rather ancient to Triple P at the time!

Her body certainly didn't look old and she was only wearing a very tiny pair of high cut red bikini bottoms.  She was generously proportioned; not fat, just very curvy and whilst our colleague from London spent most of the afternoon trying not to look at her bust Triple P was enraptured by her behind (especially as she descended the steps into the pool), although sadly it was under the water most of the time.

Well, eventually Triple P's two colleagues left us to the not so tender mercies of this lady; they both had some convincing but fictitious reason to be elsewhere.  Triple P ended up staying the weekend and we were able to find out everything we wanted to about her splendid posterior, especially as she introduced us to what we subsequently discovered was called "reverse cowgirl".  This, we found, after some experimentation, satisfied both her desire to take the uppermost role (she was remarkably assertive) and satisfied ours to appreciate her fulsome derriere.

An altogether enjoyable experience (although not without its moments of abject terror, we have to admit - especially when she appeared in the bedroom with a large kitchen knife - to cut some figs it turned out) which these splendid drawings of Signor Serpieri bring back with rather wonderful clarity.

Sepieri's ability to render a female behind in pen and ink hatching is nothing short of miraculous and we can't think of another artist, outside classical ones, who can pull off this feat quite so well.

So we will finish with this, his finest example, in Triple P's view, of the Italian female culo.

More ladies by Leone Frollo

We have shown a few pictures by Italian artist Leone Frollo over on our Seduction of Venus blog.  This week we watched the Tinto Brass directed film Così fan tutte (1992) (we will feature it in Films of the Week over on our Adventures of Triple P blog shortly) which is, like most of his films a hymn to womens' posteriors.

Whilst watching it we were reminded of Frollo's approach to erotic art which shows a similar fascination for the female rear.

This is a fascination, we have to admit, which Triple P shares and it is interesting to note that our particular friend B (who provides quite a lot of input and suggestions for this site) ventured to us, in Istanbul recently, that she was surprised that there weren't more bottoms here!

Like Signor Brass and Signor Frollo (presumably) Agent Triple P has spent a lot of time interacting with Italian girls over the years (not so much now, sadly) and admits to finding their posteriors particularly splendid (Ilaria, Paola, Beatrice, Tiziana, Carola, Maria Fernanda and some, sadly, whose names we have forgotten).

Is it an Italian thing?  Is it the pasta?  Is it the way that they walk?  Who knows?  We now need more Italian ladies on this site; especially shown from the rear!

Venus in a hammock: sculpture by Antonio Frilli

Scarlett Knight has commented that she was not aware of composer, Andre Lloyd-Webber's art collecting habit.  Here, as an example of his taste, which centres very much around the nineteenth century, is Antonio Frilli's magnificent Nude Reclining in a Hammock which Lloyd-Webber bought at Sotheby's, New York in 1994.

Not much is known about Frilli, other than the fact he was based in Florence where a studio he established still produces high quality copies of classical and renaissance sculpture.  His work was first recorded at the Esposizione Nazionale in Rome in 1883 and he also exhibited in Glasgow in 1888, Paris in 1889 and the St Louis International Exhibition in 1904, the setting, of course, for the musical Meet me in St Louis (1944)starring Judy Garland.  It was at the St Louis exhibition that this sculpture was bought by William Goldman, ironically, a theatrical entrepreneur. 

The Mastbaum Theater in Philadelphia which was build in 1929 and demolished in 1958

Goldman kept it in his garden until he moved it to join the numerous other works of art adorning the palatial Jules Mastbaum Theatre in Philadelphia in 1932.  This huge 4,717 seat cinema was named after Stanley cinema chain owner Jules Mastbaum (1872-1926) who was also a collector of sculpture. Mastbaum owned the largest collection of works by Rodin outside France, which he donated to the city of Philadelphia where they are still on exhibition in a building he commissioned (Agent Triple P went to see it a couple of years ago and we will feature it in due course).

Diana with a Deer (c.1900)

Frilli produced a number of copies of works by other sculptors and like other Italian sculptors of his generation was more influenced by 17th century style than the previous generation's reverence for neo-classical sculptures like Canova.  He produced a number of sculptures in what is known as Stile Liberty in Italy (Art Nouveau) such as these mixed marble and bronze pieces Diana with a Deer and Girl with Peacocks.

Girl with Peacocks

Frilli's workshop in Florence also produced a number of attractive decorative marble busts in bronze, marble and alabaster, such as the two examples below.

Nude reclining in a Hammock is his masterpiece, however, and it is believed that he worked on it from 1883 until 1904 when it was first exhibited.  At least two versions, both in white marble, were produced.  The second (below) was sold at Sotheby's New York as well in 1999 for $100,000.

The feeling of suspension Frilli achieves in this sculpture is really quite marvellous and you quite forget that the apparently flimsy draperies are what are holding the whole thing up.  The girls arm looks like it is idly dangling when, of course, it too, is part of the structure supporting the weight.

There is nothing classical about this wonderful, life-sized sculpture; she is a naked, modern girl beautifully captured in a sensuously indolent moment.

Utterly brilliant!

More girls in hammocks another time...

Centrefold Venus of the Month 18: Franca Petrov, November 1970

As we try to catch up on our centrefolds of the month we go back forty years to Russo-Italian girl Franca Petrov from November 1970. 

A very seventies top!

Well, that's if the accompanying text is to be believed and, at this time, Penthouse was still using some of its models' real names and stories but as we can't find anything else about the young lady who knows?

It could just be that they chose the Italo-Russian mix to justify the quotation from Stendahl they used to open the piece. Stendahl reckoned that the ideally beautiful woman "would combine the regal grace and proud carriage of a Russian nobleman with the full-blown earth beauty of an Italian girl".  We can't think that Penthouse today would open their centrefold pictorial with a quote from a nineteenth century French novelist!

In fact the Penthouse piece claims, at one point, that Franca's father had studied in Grenoble, which is just, coincidentally, Stendahl's birthplace.

This pictorial was shot by two seperate photographers: David Dagley and Marc Sharratt.  We don't think that these photographers ever did any other work for Penthouse but do know that Sharratt photographed Pink Floyd in the sixties.

For most of her pictorial's pictures Franca is actually dressed.  Agent Triple P actually likes to see his centrefold ladies dressed in some of their pictures and when you factor in the fashions of forty years ago it sets the whole pictorial firmly in its time.

Triple P, who has some experience of Italian women, responds very positively to her dark and sultry Mediterranean looks.

It's a shame so many mens' magazines photographers don't show their models smiling but then if you are being asked to look sultry and Mediterranean then its difficult, we suppose.

An interesting composition this; it reminds Triple P of the framing of some of the shots in The Ipcress File (1965) where the director, Sidney J Furie, often put random objects in the foreground whilst the action took place in the background.

Franca was blessed with a 39-24-37 figure but we only get to see her in her naked entirity once, in what is the nicest photograph of the shoot, as she sits astride a chair..

Franca has a lusciouly full pair of lips; something which Triple P particularly appreciates!

Finally, Franca becomes only the sixth Penthouse centrefold (seventh for the UK edition) to flash her fur, in this one picture.

Frankly (!) all you really take in, though, is that amazing psychedelic top!

Venus by the sea: In the Water by Eugene de Blaas

In the Water (1914)

Here is a nice one-off nude by Italian-born, Austrian painter Eugene de Blaas (1843-1932).  Blaas was born in Albano, near Rome, but spent much of his life in Venice where his father, who was also his original art tutor, was a professor at the Venice Academy.  Tourists visiting Venice wanted pictures of Venetian life and Blaas soon found a niche supplying pictures of gondoliers, fishermen and, above all, Venetian beauties in traditional costume.  His work was so popular in England two of the top art dealers of the time battled it out to represent him.

The Water Carrier (1908)

Sadly, this elegant nude, treading carefully in the shallows as a small shoal of fish darts past her legs, seems to be the only one that he did.  In all his other paintings, despite often displaying a smouldering Italian sensuality, his girls are clothed.  A lost opportunity, but perhaps for Blaas, a very commercial artist, sex didn't sell at the beginning of the last century.

 Young Italian Beauty