Aspiring Michelangelos will have to hold the charcoal: artist models have put back on their clothes to protest working conditions. In a note sent to news agency ANSA, unions representing these workers decry the “precariousness” of these jobs.

Live artist models were once state employees but over the last eight years they’ve become freelance workers striking a pose on yearly contracts.

Traditionally a job for the young, broke and shameless, only in a country “founded on work” do professional posers expect a job for life.

The protest may be worth a few pics: a “performance” at Rome’s Sapienza University, in the square in front of the Faculty of Letters at 9:30 a.m., Jan. 17.