Clearly I don’t understand the Italians as well as I thought. Perhaps I’m so jaded living in the depths of Smart Sensuality convictions that my good judgment about appropriate behavior has evaporated.

Having spent months of my life in Italy, living a wonderful love affair for five years with a well-known business executive, and having kissed the ground every time my plane landed on Italian soil, I was confounded to read that Julianne Moore’s Bulgari ad was deemed too sexy for Venice.

Personally, the ads were a bit disruptive to me — not for the discreet nakedness of Julianne Moore’s womanly body which has a long history of adulation in Italy, but for her cub friends. Making pets of wild animal babies is an unsettling message for Green Beings.

The New York Times visits the challenges of restoring Venice in a commercial world where corporate sponsorship of places and events involves not a quiet donation to preserving the planet but a typically visual announcement that can be seen for miles.

Here’s the officially-approved Bulgari ad that is inspiring Italian lovers, and I stand by my initial preference. Without the blue clouds outlining the image, the ad would blend so beautifully into the landscape, that it might belong there —  as images of nude women have graced this country for thousands of years.

When the Coke billboards and vending machines went up around the Piazza San Marco this summer, impassioned Venetians exploded in anger.