Italian art lovers were outraged after two OnlyFans models were photographed with see-through tops in front of Botticelli’s picture of a naked Venus standing on a shell.
The pictures show the two girls Alex Mucci and Eva Menta, who between them boast more than 10 million fans on Instagram and almost 200,000 on OnlyFans, standing in front of the famous painting in a see-through top.
The photoshoot took place at the Uffizi Gallery art museum in the Historic Centre of Florence in Italy’s Tuscany region.
They also reportedly took some photos in front of Botticelli’s Primavera on their social networks.
As well as pictures in front of the paintings, they also took a couple in the corridors of the famous art gallery, where they notched up hundreds of thousands of likes.
Florence city council Brothers of Italy (FdI) politician Alessandro Draghi made a statement demanding that the “offending images to be removed immediately” and added: “Botticelli’s Venus should never have been used by this pair for an indecent stunt and I’m surprised the custodians didn’t even notice. I also wonder why the matter was not brought to the attention of Director Eike Schmidt.”
He pointed out that the museum has rules forbidding the photographing of the interior for commercial purposes, and also that such photo shoots needed to be authorised in advance by the management.
The Uffizi Galleries responded to the criticism by the politician by saying that they had also requested that the images be removed.
A spokesman said: “This morning at the Uffizi the images were immediately reported, and the museum activated protocol to see them removed as they had not been authorised for usage and we are working with Instagram.
“Evidently, the two young women came to the museum with their jackets closed and then opened them when they were inside and the custodians could not see what they were doing. If they have been seen there would have been escorted from the museum.”
Alessia Mucci, known on social media as Alex or Alexis Mucci, is an aerospace engineer and influencer with over six million followers on the social media platform Instagram. Eva Menta, another influencer, has 3.5 million.
