She was called the “Mona Lisa of the twentieth century.” Gina Lollobrigida died at the age of 95 on January 16 in Rome. Her star shone dazzlingly for two decades, the 50s and 60s, and set an unsurpassed standard of eternal feminine charm.

She was born in 1927 in the historic town of Subiaco on the eastern outskirts of Rome and has been drawing and singing since childhood. She dreamed of becoming an operatic soprano and playing the parts of Puccini – from the age of seven she performed with an amateur theater troupe and participated in the local church choir. During the war, when the famous baritone Tito Gobbi came to town with a concert, she sang a duet with him and sang an aria from Tosca. It was the first moment of the public triumph of the future star.

Near the end of the war, in the spring of 1944, when the Germans occupied Subiaco and Allied bombs were falling all around, her family left the city and fled to Florence and then to Todi in Umbria. There she had another important moment in the first steps of her career, playing in the theatrical comedy Santarelina. The same performance was given in the nearby town of Monte Castello di Vibio, in a special place, at the Teatro Concordia, Italy’s smallest opera house and perhaps, as they say, “the smallest theater in the world.” In this gem of just 99 seats, a miniature of the great Italian temples of melodrama, the great diva of Italian cinema has appeared.

That same year, eighteen-year-old “Ginetta,” as she was affectionately known, settled in Rome, where she painted portraits for American soldiers to earn a living while studying painting and sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts. Art. “I know what it’s like to be hungry, I know what it’s like to lose my home,” he said many years later. Then directors and producers began to notice her and persistently offered her roles in films. At first she was indifferent. But seven years later, in 1953, he had already starred in more than twenty European films. And while Italy was coming back to life after the ravages of fascism, she became the face of the dolce vita, a symbol of rebirth on the ruins of war, a reminder of all the joys of life that the war had stolen from people.

Her first English-language film was John Huston’s Stronger Than the Devil, where she played the wife of Humphrey Bogart. The following year, her Mediterranean glow graced the cover of Time magazine. This was the time when American businessman and film producer Howard Hughes developed an aggressive, possessive obsession with her and took her to Los Angeles with him, enticing her with a multi-year contract. However, she did not succumb to his desires, remaining faithful to her husband, the Slovak doctor Milko Skofik, whom she married in 1949.

Soon her film career took off sharply: in 1956, she appeared with Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis in Variety (Trapezoid) and Anthony Quinn in Quasimodo, and in 1959 starred in the biblical epic Solomon and the Queen Shiva. with Yul Brynner. In 1961, he received major international recognition, winning a Golden Globe for his role opposite Rock Hutson in Date Every September.

A girl from a small medieval town in an Italian village was already in the pantheon of world cinema. And although Hollywood fascinated her, she always preferred to choose roles in European productions next to leading European actors such as Marcello Mastroianni, Jean-Louis Trintignant or Yves Montand.

In the early 1970s, after some sixty films and two decades in front of the camera, he chose a second career as a photojournalist. In 1973, she traveled to Cuba and interviewed Fidel Castro exclusively, and in the same year she published her first book of photographs entitled “My Italy” (Italia Mia). “Believe it or not, she doesn’t use her name to her advantage – she takes really good pictures,” the New York Times wrote. The book won the French Nadar award for the best photobook of the year. Another passion of hers was jewelry, which she methodically collected, often traveling the world to acquire them. Finally, in 2003, he sold them for five million dollars, which he donated to research into stem cell therapy.

The “National Gina” (Gina nazionale), as her compatriots called her, knew of her great charm with an implacable, sweet narcissism. “I knew Rock Hutson was gay because he didn’t fall in love with me,” he said after filming Variety. Humphrey Bogart was so dazzled by her charm that he said she “makes Marilyn Monroe look like Shirley Temple”, and of her famous rivalry with Sophia Loren, she said that “she plays the country girls and I play the ladies”. And yet, seeing her as a village girl in a photo from the filming of Jules Dassin’s film “The Law”, it seems that the Italian village was her natural environment. There is nothing urban in her naked, unpretentious natural charm and the same fire that she kindles in the small Italian town of Nomo, she lights up in the center of Paris, in front of Notre Dame Cathedral, in her famous dance as the gypsy Esmeralda in Quasimodo. Looking at this choreography in a red dress, no words are needed to explain why she was, as she was called, “the most beautiful woman in the world.”