A single blue eye, painted in miniature and framed by gold and diamonds, sits atop a ring — one of the enigmatic “lover’s eyes” that once appeared on toothpick boxes, lockets, brooches, and other keepsakes traded between aristocratic lovers. Popular from the late 1700s to early 1800s, these disembodied portraits emerged as artists grew tired of conventional commissions, and their erotic charge offered a workaround in an era governed by strict propriety. King George IV famously sent his own painted eye — along with a marriage proposal — to a commoner he wasn’t allowed to wed. They eventually married; he was buried with a miniature of her eye.