Victorian Valentine's Day Greeting Card with Heart Portrait

The proportions here tip decidedly toward the surreal: a curly-haired girl's portrait sits enshrined inside a red heart like a saint in a reliquary, her already oversized blue bonnet making her head appear comically enormous, flanked by drooping gray-blue ribbon bows while lily of the valley sprigs frame the whole tableau above and below. The accompanying text — 'Thou art as sweet as sweet can be / Don't blame me then for loving thee' — reads less like a romantic overture and more like a warning issued by someone who has already made their decision and is simply notifying you. The child's expression, framed in ruffled lace and that aggressively large bonnet, radiates the specific energy of someone who has been told to look sweet for a portrait and is quietly furious about it.