The word “miniature” was originally associated with the creation of small images and portraits. Tiny, often expensive, likenesses—requiring a highly trained artist with good eyesight and a steady hand—were often made as mementos, love tokens, or memorials that could be kept close to the body. Their carefully worked metal housings were often bracelets, pendants, or brooches with glass coverings to protect the surface of the paintings.
By the eighteenth century, when John Singleton Copley was creating small oil-on-copper portraits, that older technique was giving way to the transparent, fragile medium of watercolor or gouache on a thin sheet of ivory. In the nineteenth century, ivory miniatures could be slightly larger and were sometimes housed in rectangular leather cases with hinged covers.
In the 1840s, with the rise of photography, small daguerreotypes and ambrotypes were housed in similar cases, and artists often moved from one medium to another. By the 1860s, miniatures became rarer, as cheaper photographs provided portable images of loved ones and public figures. Around 1900, miniature painting experienced a revival, and women artists produced some of the most dramatic and exquisite examples of the art.