Exquisite in craftsmanship, unique in detail, and few in number, “lover’s eyes”—as they are popularly known today—are hand-painted miniature portraits of individual human eyes presented in an astonishing array of settings, both decorative and functional. Among the many objects housing these miniatures are lavish rings, brooches, necklaces, and boxes. From February 7 to June 10, 2012, the Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama, will present The Look of Love: Eye Miniatures from the Skier Collection, the first major exhibition of these enigmatic works of art.
Struck by the splendor of a circa-1790 diamond and blue enamel ring featuring a lover’s eye (Fig. 1), Nan and David Skier of Birmingham, Alabama, began their eye miniature collection with this solitary purchase at an antique show in 1993. With fewer than a thousand lover’s eyes thought to exist, over the past two decades the Skiers have quietly built the largest collection of these miniatures in the world, now at one hundred examples. “These rarities are at once works of art, precious jewels, and fragments of history. How poignant it is that each eye represents an actual person and an actual story of a long-ago love or bereavement, now lost to the passage of time,” says Mrs. Skier.
