This lavishly illustrated volume explores the fascinating and little-known subject of "lover's eyes," hand-painted miniatures of single human eyes set in jewellery and given as tokens of affection, or created to memorialise a deceased loved one. According to popular lore, the phenomenon began in 1785, when the Prince of Wales secretly proposed to Mrs. Maria Fitzherbert with a miniature of his own eye. This romantic gesture inspired a fad among the aristocracy for exchanging eye portraits mounted in a wide variety of settings including brooches, rings, lockets and toothpick cases.
