Monica Bellucci Poses Naked with New Baby

KOMPAS.com - Stunning actress Monica Bellucci has given hope to all women by describing herself as a 'ripe pear' as she poses for her latest magazine cover at 46 years old. With the curves that a woman half her age would die for, the mother of two is sleek and elegant as she appears on the latest edition of Italian Vanity Fair cradling her new born child.

Looking amazing, the photo shoot with five month old Leonie, is to promote a new book of her portraits and she does not have a wrinkle or line despite the late nights and early mornings that accompany a newborn baby.

In the interview she says some of the photographs conceal inner sadness but now she feels 'in a state of grace, like a ripe pear. 'Being photographed is a way of getting to know yourself. And I'm dying to know who I am, for better or worse.'

Despite being a new mum Monica has found time to make an advert for Dolce & Gabbana and Martini, as well as two films, including one with Robert De Niro which she shot  recently in Rome. In between she also posed for Australian magazine Men's Style and told them she rarely diets, that she eats anything she wants and that her favourite food is carb-laden pasta.

The book of her photographs carries her name as the title and is a collection of images from the last twenty years by Bruce Weber, Peter Lindbergh and Ellen von Unwerth. She says: 'Behind some of those photos there are some very sad moments in my life. I appear to be satisfied but I was really in pieces.'

When asked how she would feel about being photographed now, she says: 'Like a ripe pear, Perfectly ripe and mature. Very sweet and succulent. A kind of state of grace.'

Speaking of the nude photographs in the book, whose proceeds are going towards two charities Bellucci supports, an association for the parents of child cancer victims and a French charity which helps women in trouble, Monica says: 'I chose them myself. I didn't want modelling shots and publicity ones. I wanted to show the body's primordial expressiveness.

'Actually, that's what has always attracted me to photography. When I was a girl, looking at books by Helmut Newton, Bruce Weber and Richard Avedon, that's what fascinated me: the art of Mother Nature, the body as it should be.'

Amazingly she added: 'I have never had the body of a model, I am tall but not that tall, I'm curvaceous but have never felt the desire to diet. Posing for a photographer or acting in the cinema can only be done if you are not afraid of discovering who you are.'

Monica, who has two daughters with her French actor husband Vincent Cassel, Deva and Leonie, adds that the book was 'an old idea, but one that I'd been resisting.

'I finally gave in to my agents when they kept insisting it was a shame the photos would not be preserved, together, and because all the proceeds are going to good causes.'

This is the third time that Monica has been on the cover of Italian Vanity Fair - earlier this year before giving birth she posed naked with her pregnancy bump and she did a similar shoot six years ago.