Vanessa Bryant posted touching tribute art of 'Gigi' Bryant in Kobe's No. 24 jersey
Vanessa Bryant posted touching tribute art of her 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, one week after the young basketball player died in a helicopter crash.
Bryant posted an illustration of a grinning Gianna, or "Gigi," on Instagram early Sunday. The image shows the 13-year-old cradling a basketball and sporting a Los Angeles Lakers jersey with the same No. 24 worn by her father, Kobe Bryant, who died in the crash along with Gianna and seven others while en route to a youth basketball game.
The 37-year-old mother wrote alongside the photo "Seeing my babygirl smile and happy again with a basketball 🏀 under her arm, wrapped in 💜💛love just warmed my heart."
"My Gigi," Bryant added.
The hashtag "Mambacita" is a nod to Kobe Bryant's "Black Mamba" nickname, which spread to his family and his brands that supported youth basketball.
She also thanked the Japanese designer and illustrator Reina Koyano, who had published the illustration on her account.
The comment sections on Koyano's post were filled with praise from Bryant's fans, some of whom wanted to purchase a print of the work. Koyano said in a later post that she would not be selling prints of the piece but instead "would like to offer this as free downloadable wallpaper for your phones."
"I hope this serves as reminders for all of us that life is precious, and the fact that we can wake up to a new day every day is truly a blessing," Koyano added about the illustration.
After a few days of silence, Bryant first publicly addressed the crash in a heartbreaking tribute on Instagram, writing that she and the couple's other three daughters, Natalia, Bianka, and Capri, were "devastated."
"I'm not sure what our lives hold beyond today, and it's impossible to imagine life without them," she wrote.
