Euro-Persian self-staging and feminine power in Teresa Sherley’s portraits (1622-7)
Résumé
While Robert Sherley has received wide scholarly recognition as the first Englishman acting as an ambassador for Persia in Europe between 1608 and 1628, less attention has been given to his wife, the Circassian Christian Teresa Sampsonia Sherley, who travelled alongside him. Lady Sherley was instrumental in helping Robert assert his ambassadorial role in European courts where he was not always welcomed and her pivotal role is visible in her own portraits, commissioned alongside her husband’s during his second embassy in Rome (1622) and England (1623-4). A close study of these portraits will help shed light on Teresa’s influence in the visual staging of the Euro-Persian silk trade that her husband was hoping to establish for the Shah, as well as on her own self-mythologizing as a powerful Eastern woman.