A PRESTIGIOUS Italian gallery is suing Pornhub for using a porn star to pose as The Birth of Venus.
The Uffizi Gallery is launching legal action against the website after it hired Italian adult star Ilona Staller, 69, to promote X-rated content focusing on Renaissance artwork.
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Uffizi Gallery is Florence is suing Pornhub over the ad, which features former porn star Ilona Staller, 69 Credit: Pornhub 4
Botticelli's The Birth of Venus (1484) is just one of many classics getting a touch up Credit: Getty
A promo video for Classic Nudes - a new porno guide which promises to showcase the erotic potential of the Renaissance - shows Staller, a retired adult actor and an ex-Italian MP known as Cicciolina, as Venus in Botticelli's iconic The Birth of Venus.
Botticelli's masterpiece depicts the goddess of love arriving on land and is met by a woman often identified as the Three Graces, who holds out a cloak covered in flowers.
Pornhub says Classic Nudes aims to attract a more highbrow audience by recreating some of the best-known painted nudes sitting in galleries around the world.
The adult site is promising to take voyeurs "past all the prude paintings" and straight to "the good stuff: representations of the naked body in all it's artistic glory".
The new guide will show where famous pieces are located and in same instances, will offer a real-life depiction by nude models.
DOWN TO A FINE ART
But the Uffizi is no stranger to legal battles and recently took action to stop a bin lorry firm in Florence from using its images without permission to promote recycling.
Now the gallery claims PornHub is simply using its masterpieces for publicity.
Tommaso Galligani, a spokesman for the Uffizi, said: “This is a publicity stunt by Pornhub and we don’t want to turn it into a big international case."
Pornhub, and its parent company MindGeek, did not respond to a request for comment.
The website's home page says: "Some people think of museums as boring, stuffy or dull. But what if we told you they housed a collection of priceless porn?"
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The adult website promises to get 'past past all the prude paintings' and straight to 'the naked body in all it's artistic glory' Credit: Pornhub 4
Porbhub hopes the interative guide will spur a generation to fall back in love with Renaissance art Credit: Pornhub
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"Because porn may not be considered art, but some art can definitely be considered porn," it continued.
People can participate in interactive tours of some of the most renowned museums in the world such as the Museo Del Prado, the National Gallery, the Louvre, the Met, Uffizi Gallery and the Museu d’Orsay and enjoy provocative descriptions of each masterpiece.
For example, Botticelli's 'Spring' that hangs in the Uffizi says the artist “painted this for a dude called Lorenzo de Medici to give to his new bride – presumably as a medieval mood starter”.