It's not unusual to see art aficionados squint to see the details of a painting, but at an exhibition in Washington, D.C., they have to squint just to see some of the paintings.

　　With a magnifying glass, a viewer can make out individual blossoms on Mimi Hegler's "Hydrangeas," an 8 centimeters by 10 centimeters painting among 1,122 tiny artworks on view at the Smithsonian Institution's Ripley Center International Gallery.

　　A filigreed silver box, topped with a magnifying glass, contains the smallest works in the Third Exhibition of Fine Arts in Miniature: three ivory discs the size of shirt buttons, painted in watercolor.

　　One depicts the Taj Mahal in Agra, India. Another portrays the Emperor Shah Jahan who ordered it built, and the third depicts his wife, Mumtaz Mahal, for whom it was built.

　　There are 516 artists from 16 countries represented at the show, which has pieces varying from landscapes, portraits, still life, watercolor, oil painting and prints to sculpture, enamels, porcelain and scrimshaw.

　　Miniatures go back at least to medieval times, when artists painted pictures on the initial letters of sections in Bibles and other religious manuscripts.

　　(The Associated Press)