The rectangular brooch centred with a glazed compartment depicting a painted miniature of a lady's eye, frame with rocailles, approx. 3.5 x 2.8 cm, approx. 11.5 g

One curious type of miniature was the “Lover’s Eye”, a subgenre of jewelry that was very popular during the Georgian era. For centuries, small personal portraits of a loved one had been common adornments in the costume of the time, but representations of that person’s eyes were something truly new. Wealthy people wore these charms on everything from rings to brooches to, of course, pendants.
Lover’s eyes, often set in ivory plaques, were graceful and discreet. Presumably, only the wearer and the sitter knew the identity of the depicted lover, making the experience totally intimate and mysterious.
The Prince of Wales is said to have given his wife, Mary Fitzherbert, a miniature of his right eye, they later separated, but when he died in 1830, they discovered that he was wearing a necklace with a padlock pendant near his heart with Fitzherbert’s eye inside.
The places on the body where people wore them (on the wrist or near the heart) created a tactile and emotional connection that reflected the sentimental closeness between the subject and the wearer.