AN ENORMOUS REBIRTH PORTRAIT OF SIR ROBERT SHERLEY,WITH SAFAVID COURT DRESS FEATURED LUXURIOUS FROM PERSIA

Robert Shirley with his Safavid court dress featured luxurious, flowing, and layered garments made from silks and other fine fabrics, often adorned with gold and vibrant dyes. Key components included multiple robes, he was the third son of Sir Thomas Sherley or Shirley (1542–1612), Treasurer-at-War in the Low Countries, and builder of the mansion at Wiston, West Sussex. Sir Thomas encountered financial disaster in the 1590s, forcing all three of his sons to seek their fortunes abroad. In 1598–9, Robert accompanied the second son, Sir Anthony (1565–1635), on a mission on behalf of the Earl of Essex to Ferrara, and then to Persia (Iran), where he remained behind and married Sampsonia Khan (1589-1668) – a Circassian noblewoman of the Safavid Empire (Sherley 1825). Sampsonia was baptised by Carmelites and given the new name Teresa (Teresia). In 1607–8 he left Persia with Teresa to negotiate alliances with European princes against Turkey on behalf of Abbas the Great. He was well received by Sigismund III of Poland and Pope Paul V, and was first knighted, then created a count palatine, by Emperor Rudolph II. Shirley was in England from 1611 to 1612–3 but found his mission opposed by merchants in the Levant. He began a second series of missions at the end of 1615, and spent from 1617 to the summer of 1622 in Spain; on 22 July he arrived in Rome, where he was received as Persian Ambassador by Pope Gregory XV (Vaes 1924). While in Rome he encountered Van Dyck, whose ‘Italian’ sketchbook contains a whole set of quick pen sketches of Shirley, his wife and suite (British Museum, London, inv. nos. 1957,1214.207.62 and 1957,1214.207.60). The British Museum sketch of Shirley shows him full figure but in profile and is inscribed ‘Ambasciatore di Persia in Roma’ (Persian Ambassador to Rome) with the colour notes ‘drapo doro’ (gold cloak) and ‘le figure et gli foliage di colori differenti de veluto’ (figures and foliage in multi-coloured velvet). It tends to suggest that Van Dyck was originally struck by the clothing donned by Shirley and that the actual portrait was not commissioned until later. The sketch of Shirley’s wife, Teresa, is inscribed ‘habito et maniera di Persia’ (Persian dress and style). By contrast, her sketch seems consciously a study for her portrait, as its landscape setting is also included. In Van Dyck’s portrait, Shirley is shown wearing a qaba embroidered with gold and silver thread, and a balapush, richly embroidered with figures and flowers. These would have been made in Persia, probably by royal tailors. The bow and arrow may be a token of gentry status. Van Dyck’s training with Rubens had sharpened his eye for the enriching effect offered by sumptuous garments. Van Dyck had also recently begun to absorb the lessons of Titian and the other great Venetian colourists. As a representative of the Shah, Shirley regularly wore formal Persian attire. The historian and churchman Thomas Fuller later observed: ‘He much affected to appear in foreign vests, and as if his clothes were his limbs, accounted himself never ready till he had something of the Persian habit about him’ (Fuller 1662, p. 572). But who commissioned these portraits, when, and what became of them? It seems most likely that Shirley himself had them painted before he departed from Rome on 20 August 1622, but it is not clear whether the pictures accompanied him to his next post as Persian Ambassador to the Court of James I in London. While in England, he was painted, again in Persian dress, for another whole-length portrait (Berkeley Castle, Gloucestershire), which might suggest that Van Dyck was not available for copying. On the other hand, it may have been its presence in England that stimulated the East India Company in 1626 to commission Richard Greenbury to paint the rival Persian envoy, Naqd ‘Ali Beg, in a similar cloak (British Library, acc. no. 423). Shirley quarrelled with Naqd ‘Ali Beg to such an extent that the king sent both of them packing in 1626. He died in Persia, two years later, under the mistaken belief that he had lost the Shah’s favour. The portraits seem to have remained with Teresa, Shirley’s widow, who retired to the convent attached to S. Maria della Scala in Rome, where she died in 1668. They were unlikely to have remained in England as there was no Shirley seat there (Wiston having been sold to Lionel Cranfield, 1st Earl of Middlesex, in 1622), and Robert’s only son, Henry, having pre-deceased him. If portraits had stayed in England, they would most likely have been copied or engraved. They may have been seen in Rome by G.P. Bellori around this time. The description in his life of the artist (1672) – ‘Nell’ habito persiano, crescendo con la vaghezza de gli habiti peregrine la bellezza de’ ritratti’ (‘the Persian dress enhanced the beauty of the portraits with the charm of their exotic garments’) – could suggest that he knew them from personal inspection (Bellori 1672, p. 255). They were very possibly imported to England from Italy in the 18th century, and bought by the 2nd Earl of Egremont (1710–63), as one of his numerous acquisitions of pictures on the art market.