La reina Victoria

Victoria had this painted in secret in 1843 and gave it to Albert on his 24th birthday. She was queen of the most powerful country on earth and only 24 herself, three years married. Winterhalter, the portraitist every European court wanted, showed her the way almost no queen let herself be seen: hair slipping loose from its knot over one bare shoulder, a pendant at her throat thought to hold a lock of Albert's hair. In her journal she called it her secret picture and wrote how happy she was to have found something that pleased him so much. It became his favourite, and it hung where he could see it in his private rooms.