The infant Princess Victoria is depicted holding a miniature of Prince Albert set in a bracelet and leaning against the arm of a bergère. The miniature is a meticulous copy of a painting by John Lucas commissioned by Queen Victoria in 1844 and given to her mother, the Duchess of Kent, as a birthday present on 17 August.

The miniature shown in the Princess Royal's hands was one of a number of copies after an image of Prince Albert by Ross which Queen Victoria had set into bracelets. Both the Queen and close members of her family enjoyed wearing miniatures in jewelled settings in keeping with their traditional function as intimate tokens of regard and affection. Queen Victoria particularly enjoyed wearing miniatures in bracelets, a fashion which had been popularised by her grandmother, Queen Charlotte, who is frequently depicted in portraits wearing an enamel miniature of George III set in a bracelet.

Guglielmo Faija was born in Palermo, Sicily, and trained with Jacques-Louis Comte in Naples and Frédéric Millet in Paris. He exhibited at the Paris Salon from 1831 to 1837, and at the Royal Academy in London from 1838 to 1848.