For every Lucian Freud, who used to give his models regular breaks and offer them oysters and lobster, there is a Pablo Picasso who—if he didn’t bed the model in question—didn’t have much care for their wellbeing.
A growing number of people in the country that celebrates the nude more than any other have argued that the effort, skill and experience of a professional model should never be taken for granted.
In Florence, where Michelangelo and Artemisia Gentileschi honed their craft, there is a growing debate about the exploitative nature of the relationship between artist and model.
Some of the group of ten life models who work at the prestigious state-run Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze have threatened a nude strike to demand improved conditions for work that leaves many with aching limbs and muscles.
“Economically, the government has abandoned us,” Antonella Migliorini, a veteran life model at the Accademia with more than 30 years’ experience, told me. “It’s as if we don’t exist.”
Founded in 1784 in a former hospital, the Accademia is one of Italy’s leading fine art colleges. Its roots can be traced back to the 16th-century Accademia delle Arti del Disegno. Today, it has 2,000 university-level students.
Migliorini, 61, has posed for well-respected professional artists and long campaigned for better work rights. She said that some of the Accademia’s ten models were like athletes capable of holding complex poses with twisted torsos and arms intertwined above their heads.
She added that she was sometimes asked to hold poses lasting eight hours for sculpture classes, with breaks of varying lengths. “You need a great deal of training behind you,” Migliorini said.
Work for beginner models is even more taxing. A 39-year-old British model living in Tuscany, who asked to remain anonymous, said her colleagues commonly battled with spasms, muscle strain and circulation issues. After relocating from Edinburgh to Florence shortly before Brexit, she spent two years at The Florence Academy of Art, a private art college. Models posed for three hours, often in poorly-heated rooms, in 25-minute stretches and five-minute breaks.
“Have you ever tried holding a position for 25 minutes without moving?” she asked. “It takes enormous muscle engagement. It’s incredibly demanding.”
Pay rarely matches the effort. Migliorini’s one-year renewable contract covers 20 hours a week at $28 an hour—the same rate as a quarter of a century ago—earning her about $1,440 a month after tax. Others, she said, invoiced per hour. The British former model said that, in the private sector, she earned as little as $8 an hour on a zero-hours contract. “It’s part of a bigger problem tied to Italian employment culture,” she said.
What makes it worthwhile, she added, is that models are an active part of the creative process, striking poses of sheer beauty to offer artists the perfect subject.
History shows that models and painters have sometimes been intimately connected. Caravaggio, the renegade pioneer of chiaroscuro who fled Rome after murdering a man, supposedly had a sexual relationship with Cecco del Caravaggio, the servant and boy model who posed for erotically-charged works including John the Baptist (Youth with a Ram) and Amor vincit omnia.
The Accademia’s models have mobilized after rules designed to improve their status have instead excluded many. Last year, the ministry of universities and research aligned models’ status with that of administrative staff, meaning those with at least three years’ experience who have been selected through an official selection process should be offered permanent 36-hour contracts.
Yet, under the Accademia’s interpretation, models hired at least three years ago through simplified recruitment procedures do not qualify. Migliorini said none of the academy’s models, some with decades of service, had been awarded permanent contracts. Giancarlo Iacomini, a member of the national council of the USB trade union, called the situation “contradictory”.
The 36-hour contract, he added, is flawed because it assumes all hours are spent posing, without accounting for preparation at home. He questioned why models were treated differently from piano accompanists, whose contracts allow for a third of hours as home study, reducing the risk of tendinitis and arthritis. “Administrative staff can spend 36 hours at a computer, but they don’t have to use their bodies,” he said. “For life models, this is life-changing.”
Iacomini said he had discussed the matter last month with the Accademia’s director, Gaia Bindi. He expressed hope for a resolution but warned that court action was not off the table. The Accademia recently told The Art Newspaper, a specialist publication, it wanted to “stabilize [the models’] position and properly value their irreplaceable contribution to education”.
It did not immediately respond to our request for an update.
In 2009 Migliorini and fellow models grabbed headlines with a strike in which they posed nude outside galleries, dressed as Venus, and stood topless in shop windows with nooses around their necks. While they failed to secure permanent contracts, they won internal concessions with dedicated spaces to shower and relax between sessions.
Asked about the prospect of a new nude protest in the Accademia’s courtyard, Migliorini said she was sceptical. Precarious conditions have forced many models to take on other jobs, she explained, making it more likely they would abandon modeling altogether.
She warned that Italy’s rich tradition of life modeling risks dying a “slow but steady” death. “What we’re facing is the dismantling of a cultural activity,” she said. “That upsets me, because I’ve dedicated my life to this.”
James Imam is a Milan-based writer
