A label preserved with the miniature identifies it as the eye of Princess Feodora of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, half-sister to Queen Victoria, in line with its earliest mention in a Catalogue of Works of Art in the Audience Room, Windsor Castle (1914). However, portraits of Princess Feodora, such as Sir William Ross’s cabinet miniature of 1838 (420416), consistently show her with large brown eyes, casting doubt on this identification. Queen Mary’s identification of the sitter as Queen Victoria may well, therefore, be correct, although Queen Victoria’s eyes, whilst blue, were rather more protuberant in the manner of her Hanoverian ancestors than the eye in this miniature. This is a well-executed miniature by a good English hand, and could be by Sir William Ross who is known to have painted numerous eye miniatures, including, in 1843, one of Princess Feodora for Queen Victoria: ‘Ross, for an eye of Feodora £6.6.0’ (RA VIC/Add T. 231/41). However, the copyist Guglielmo Faija is also known to have supplied the demand for eye miniatures and could also be responsible for this example. Princess Feodora herself wrote to her half-sister on 15 November 1836: ‘You must know that to me the expression of the eye is everything in a countenance. I consider the eyelids, therefore, as a very necessary part of the human face, not only to shelter them, but also to shelter their expression, for they say sometimes what the mouth would not say’ (Letters of Feodora, Princess of Hohenlohe-Langenburg 1828–72, London, 1874, vol. I, p. 63).