miniature rediscovered by Old Master woman added to the collection of the United States National Gallery of Art

At Caterina Angela Pierozzi’s Annunciation (1677)

National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

The National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, has stepped up its purchases of works by women artists in recent years, and this rediscovered miniature in gouache on vellum of the Annunciation by Caterina Angela Pierozzi is one of them. Bought at Colnaghi Gallery at last year’s TEFAF Maastricht fair, it is the only known work by Pierozzi and can be firmly attributed to her thanks to an inscription with the artist’s name and Florentine identity. Pierozzi was the second woman after Artemisia Gentileschi to be elected to the oldest art academy in the world, and she enjoyed the patronage of the Medici Grand Duchess of Tuscany, Vittoria della Rovere, a leading proponent of female artists. This miniature could also have been a Medici order. Its painstakingly rendered composition comes from a supposedly miraculous fresco then in the care of the Medici family in the Basilica della Santissima Annunziata in Florence.

by Joshua Reynolds Portrait of Mai (Omai) (circa 1776)

National Portrait Gallery, London, and J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

In order to raise the £50 million needed to buy Reynolds’ famous portrait of May, the National Portrait Gallery (NPG) has entered into an unusual joint purchase agreement with the Getty. The UK government extended the export bar on the painting to give the NPG time to secure £25 million in funding, which the Getty matched. The work is due to be shown when the gallery reopens on June 22 and then travel to Los Angeles for the 2028 Olympics. The museums have called the acquisition “a new model of international collaboration.” Mai, from the island of Raiatea, was the first Pacific Islander to visit the UK after joining Captain Cook’s crew in Tahiti. He became a celebrity who inspired literature, art and even a pantomime. The work retained a privileged place in Reynolds’ studio until his death in 1792. Mai died in Polynesia around 1780, when he was not yet 30, after having difficulty adapting to him.

Beeple’s S.2122 (2023)

Deji Art Museum, Nanjing

Mike Winkelmann, better known as Beeple, was catapulted into the mainstream art world by the record 2021 sale of his NFT digital collage at Christie’s for $69 million. His first physical work was the four-channel video sculpture HUMAN ONE (2021), depicting a mysterious figure surveying an evolving digital landscape. It was conceived as “an infinite work” that Beeple will continually update, the artist said. While this work was recently exhibited at the M+ Museum in Hong Kong, on loan from collector Ryan Zurrer, the Deji Art Museum has purchased its suite, S.2122, from LGDR Gallery at Art Basel Hong Kong. This second kinetic sculpture, which comes with an NFT, imagines a future in which humanity is gradually overwhelmed by rising sea levels. “I wanted to do work that addresses the reality of climate change,” Beeple said. “But I also have a message of hope in that I believe that no matter what, humans will find a way to survive.”