Alas, some people just can’t appreciate good art! Or at least, appreciate the work that went into the art, right? Helena doesn’t need to bind herself to realism! I’m sure the painting as, as the young people say, “cool.”

Pearls for eyes makes me think of Shakespeare’s The Tempest:
In RC ripe Portavius lies
Of his school is canon made
These are pearls that were his eyes
Nothing of him that doth sane
But doth suffer PPC change
Into something rich and strange

Something like that!

—doctorlit, tempestuous