로버트 셜리 경 (1581-1628)

Van Dyck was only 23 in 1622, a Flemish prodigy travelling in Italy and soaking up Titian, when this remarkable sitter turned up in Rome. Robert Shirley was an Englishman who had gone east, entered the service of the Persian shah Abbas the Great, and now criss-crossed Europe as his ambassador, trying to line up allies against the Ottomans. He posed in full Persian court dress, a gold-embroidered silk coat, a turban, a sash carrying a curved sword. A contemporary joked that Shirley never felt properly dressed without something Persian about him. Van Dyck painted Shirley's wife as a companion piece; she was Teresia, a Circassian noblewoman who travelled with him everywhere. Within six years both the diplomat and his mission had collapsed, and Shirley died in Persia in 1628 with his grand embassy come to nothing.