Apollo’s month-to-month survey of essentially the most thrilling works to enter public collections shines a lightweight on the gaps museums have been capable of plug and the brand new tales they want to inform.

Norwich Fortress Museum and Artwork Gallery
Seventeenth-century pietra dura table-top

Due to assist from the Nationwide Heritage Memorial Fund, this spectacular Seventeenth-century pietra dura table-top has entered the collections on the Norwich Fortress Museum and Artwork Gallery. The table-top was initially commissioned by a member of the Paston household, the nice patrons of the humanities within the area, and their coat of arms has been integrated into round shapes in 4 corners of the central design. Created in a workshop in Florence, the table-top is embellished with intertwining patterns of fruit, birds and flowers made out of inlaid semi-precious stones set in the normal pietra dura approach.

Pietra dura table-top (Seventeenth century) Norwich Fortress Museum and Artwork Gallery, Norfolk Museums Service

Nationwide Gallery of Artwork, Washington, D.C.
Grotesque Head of an Previous Lady (1489–90), Leonardo da Vinci

This sketch of a ladies with exaggerated options is one in all greater than 30 research of human physiognomy accomplished by Leonardo da Vinci. Depicted carrying a small tiara and with an elaborate hairdo, Leonardo’s imaginary topic possesses bodily eccentricities that may pave the best way for caricaturists of the 18th century. Donated to the Nationwide Gallery of Artwork in Washington D.C by Dian Woodner, the daughter of the property developer Ian Woodner, this small sketch turns into simply one in all ten drawings by Leonardo held in public collections in the US.

Grotesque Head of an Previous Lady (1489–90), Leonardo da Vinci. Courtesy Nationwide Gallery of Artwork, Washington, D.C.

Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Wedgwood tea and occasional set from the property of Karl Lagerfeld (c. 1923)

Beforehand owned by the late dressmaker Karl Lagerfeld, this uncommon artwork nouveau tea and occasional set was designed by the French designer Paul Follot for Wedgwood. Follot was really useful to Cecil Wedgwood in 1911 and created a collection of designs for the manufacturing home which had been in manufacturing till the early Nineteen Twenties. As many of those designs had been labour-intensive to supply, they had been made in small portions and few stay. Bearing the weird Campanula design, distinguished by a scrolling deal with and an elaborate lengthy, fluted finial topped by a fleur-de-lis, this monochromatic set is a crucial addition to the V&A’s assortment of Wedgwood porcelain and is believed to the be the one set of its form in existence.

Huntington Library, Artwork Museum and Botanical Gardens, San Marino
Portrait of Joseph Hyacinthe François-de-Paule de Rigaud, comte de Vaudreuil (c. 1784), Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun

Because the courtroom painter to Marie Antoinette, Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun made her identify as one of many main portraitists of the Ancien Régime within the late 18th century.  This portray depicts Joseph Hyacinthe François-de-Paule de Rigaud, comte de Vaudreuil, in ornate, ceremonial gown on the event of his knighthood by Louis XVI in 1770; the purple rosette and ribbon denote navy honours. Made attainable by the assist of the Ahmanson Basis, which funds cultural initiatives in Los Angeles, this portrait turns into the second work by Vigée Le Brun to enter the gathering of the Huntington.

Portrait of Joseph Hyacinthe François-de-Paule de Rigaud, comte de Vaudreuil (c. 1784), Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun. Huntington Library, Artwork Museum and Botanical Gardens, San Marino

Kimbell Artwork Museum, Fort Value
Nonetheless Life with a Bowl of Strawberries, Basket of Cherries, and Department of Gooseberries (1631), Louise Moillon

This vivid nonetheless life portray by the French baroque painter Louise Moillon is one in all few by the artist in American museum collections. Depicting wild strawberries and different fruits in a fragile blue and white Wanli bowl, the portray has been learn as proof of Seventeenth-century French agricultural reforms and the Parisian urge for food for recent fruit and greens. The the Aristocracy, particularly, took nice delight in rising recent produce on their nation estates, which had been picked by by ladies and youngsters and transported to the town to be bought at market. On this work, Moillon emphasises the ripeness of the purple berries via the distinction of the darkish, shadowy background. The portray was acquired by the Kimbell to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the musuem.

Nonetheless Life with a Bowl of Strawberries, Basket of Cherries, and Department of Gooseberries (1631), Louise Moillon. Kimbell Artwork Museum

Musée des Beaux-Arts d’Orléans,
Eight works from the Brooks Beaulieu assortment

Following the redevelopment of the museum’s Nineteenth-century galleries, the Musée des Beaux-Arts d’Orléans has bought eight works from the Brooks Beaulieu assortment in a sale at Artcurial on 10 November. Among the many works acquired is a uncommon portray by the Nineteenth-century French engraver Tony Johannot and a set of seven medallions, one by the French romantic sculptor Jean Bernard Duseigneur and 6 by David d’Angers.