Benedetta Barzini

Benedetta Barzini (born 22 September 1943 in Porto Santo Stefano) is an Italian photomodel, journalist, writer, educator, feminist. In the 1960s she made a brilliant career as a model in the United States, shooting for Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, Ugo Mulas, Henry Clarke (photographer), Andy Warhol, became the first Italian on the cover of American Vogue and in 1965 Barzini's photograph graced the cover of the first issue of Italian Vogue, but by the end of the decade was disillusioned with the fashion world. Upon returning to Milan, she became a member of the Italian Communist Party and a radical feminist. Author of over 5 books, she lectured at three universities for twenty years.

Family and early years
Benedetta was born on 22 September 1943 in Porto Santo Stefano as the youngest daughter of Italian journalist and author Luigi Barzini Jr. and his first wife, Giannalisa Gianzana Feltrinelli, enormously rich widow of Carlo Feltrinelli. Benedetta's sibling Ludina was only one year older. Giannalisa Feltrinelli had a son from her previous marriage, Giangiacomo Feltrinelli. Her parents' marriage quickly fell apart; according to Benedetta's recollections, her mother did not love her or her sister Ludina. After leaving the family, Luigi Barzini didn't even congratulate Benedetta on her birthday, and when travelling to New York her mother rented herself an apartment on the 60th floor of a skyscraper, and her children a separate flat on the third, where a nanny lived with them. The relationship with her mother was so difficult that Benedetta began to suffer from anorexia and other psychological problems at the age of 14. Caught for the third time in a clinic for anorexics in Geneva, she sought help from the young Italian consul Antonello Pietromarca, who gave her a passport and helped her go to the juvenile court, where Benedetta received documents so that her mother could no longer interfere with her affairs.

Photomodel career
Barzini was discovered at age 20 on the streets of Rome by Consuelo Crespi in 1963; Diana Vreeland soon thereafter received photographs of Barzini and sent a telegram asking if she could come to Manhattan to shoot for American Vogue with Irving Penn. She did so, and within ten days, she was signed with Ford Models. She hence established a successful fashion career in New York City, working with other notable fashion photographers such as Ugo Mulas, Richard Avedon, and Henry Clarke. Barzini appeared on the cover of the first issue of Vogue Italia in November 1965, and became the first Italian model to be featured on the cover of American Vogue.

In December 1966, Barzini was named one of the "100 Great Beauties of the World" by the American fashion magazine Harper's Bazaar. She began training at the Actors Studio around that time, and in the process became romantically involved with, and later engaged to, New York poet and media artist Gerard Malanga, an early collaborator of Andy Warhol. He would dedicate various works to her, such as his Poems for Benedetta Barzini and The Last Benedetta Poems.

Barzini became friends with and muse to artists including Salvador Dalí, Lee Strasberg, Bert Stern, and Richard Avedon in the course of her career. She also started hanging out at Andy Warhol's Factory and was headed for the top rank of New York models.

Activism and teaching
In 1968 she returned to Milan, tired, by her own admission, of being in America as a mere props and a numb witness to the life that was going on around her, with no one interested in her as a person. She met Italian film director Roberto Faenza, and they married in 1969. On the night she gave birth to twins, Nini and Giacomo, Faenza left her. In Benedetta's recollections, the first years after their birth were the only when her mother paid for the check and thus supported Barzini.

Upon returning to Milan, Barzini became a Marxist and joined the Italian Communist Party and worked on a project for health courses for workers in factories. Bardzini later married the designer Antonio Barrese, with whom she had two more children, Irene and Benjamino. Her marriage to Barrese lasted seven years.

From 1996 to 2016, Bardzini taught fashion anthropology at the Polytechnic University of Milan and New Academy of Fine Arts, also in Milan, and at the University of Urbino, lecturing on subjects such as problematic images of women in fine art and the mass media. She guest-lectured at academic institutions such as the Italian University for Design.

Bardzini was active in the feminist movement and has always been a critic of the objectification of the female body. She openly stated that in the fashion world, a woman is a "game" and a photographer is a "predator" whose aim is to sell her prey to the highest bidder. In Western culture in the 1960s and 1970s, her ideas that inner value should take precedence over outer value and that natural ageing has its own beauty ran counter to the mainstream.

Bardzini has also worked extensively as a journalist and writer. She has published "Elegance: Reflections on self-presentation" (L'eleganza per me. Riflessioni sulla rappresentazione di sè (1987), "Storia di una passione senza corpo" (1992), "Bemberg e l'arte di Gruau" (1995), "Aldo Coppola" (2000), "Emilio Cavallini" (2010), "Discipline fashion. The Ethics of Appearance" (Discipline della moda. L'etica dell'apparenza, 2003).

Later years
Since the mid-2010s there has been a renaissance in Barzini's public career. In 2015, designer Antonio Marras dedicated his autumn collection to her. In 2018, Barzini starred in a photo shoot for Vogue Italia.

In 2021, she became the face of the Gucci Beauty cosmetics line.

Awards and honors
In 2017, Barzini received a gold medal for civil honor from the Milan City Council, in part for “destroying the stereotype of the brainless cover girl.”

In 2018, she won the Victoria award of the initiative Il tempo delle donne, established by Procter & Gamble.

In cinema
Barzini was the subject of Malanga's 30-minute experimental film In Search of the Miraculous (1967).

The 2019 documentary film, The Disappearance of My Mother, was directed by Beniamino Barrese, Barzini’s son. The film showed at the London Film Festival 2019, Sundance, and other festivals, events, and venues, charting in at the 32nd Annual European Film Awards.