Matthaeus Greuter (1564-1638), engraver, portrait of Sherley after Peter Oliver): Sir Robert...

Inscription: Robertvs Sherley Anglvs Comes Caesare Eqves Avrat (Robert Sherley, Englishman, Count in the Emperors Order of the Golden Spur). Die 29. septembris (September 29). Magni Sophi Persaru Legatus ad SSmu D.N./ Paulu P.P.V. Ceterosq. Principes Christianos. Ingress. Romam solenni pompa die 28. Septemb. 1609. aetatis sue. 28. (Legate of the Great Sophi, king of Persia, to His Holiness Our Lord Paul V and other Christian princes. Entered Rome in solemn ceremony on the 28th day of September 1609 at the age of 28). Supm lic. MG f. Si vendino alla Pace. cu priuil.o (Under license. MG [Initials of Matthaeus Greuter, intertwined]. On sale at the [Piazza della] Pace. With privilege).

Matthaeus Greuter (1564-1638) was born in 1564 at Strasbourg and died in 1638 at Rome. He was mostly known for his cartographical works. He started his career in Avignon and Lyon and moved to Rome in 1606 were he received important commissions for Cardinal Scipione Borghese, Pope Paul V, Pope Urban VIII, and the Accademia dei Lincei. He was commissioned by Sherley to produce a portrait of him and highlight his audience with the pope, in order to publicize the importance of his embassy to the European courts. 

Peter Oliver was born in 1589 at Isleworth (Middlesex) and died in 1647 at London. He was the eldest son of Isaac Oliver, a French-born English portrait miniature painter at the court of James I. When Isaac Oliver died, he left his finished and unfinished drawings for his, with the hope that he would live to exercise the art of his father. Peter Oliver was trained by his father and succeeded to his position at court, serving both James I and Charles I. Charles I commissioned him to produce a number of copies in miniature of some of the King's finest Italian and Flemish old master paintings, with seven of these miniatures remaining still at Windsor Castle. Olive brought the miniature to new heights as an art form, transforming it from a vehicle for portraiture to an important expression of the most prestigious early modern genre of history painting. Oliver moved in elite social and intellectual circles and received numerous commissions from members of the aristocracy and wealthy members of English society. His miniature of Robert Sherley was once in the collection of Horace Walpole and listed as lot 14 on day 14 in the 1842 Strawberry Hill sale (when Walpoles collections were sold by his heirs) as an exquisite miniature in water colours, by Isaac Oliver, of Sir Anthony Shirley, ambassador from the Sophy of Persia to King James I, the dress is half English and half Persian, richly and beautifully painted and was bought at that sale by William Blamire. Because of the mistakes in this auction catalogue entry, the miniature was erroneously attributed for several years to Isaac Oliver, and the sitter erroneously identified as Anthony Sherley.

Robert Sherley was born in 1581 at Wiston (Sussex) and died in 1628 at Qazvin (Persia). He travelled to Persia in 1598, accompanying his brother, Anthony, who had been sent to Safavid Persia with 5000 horses to train the Persian army according to the rules and customs of the English militia and to reform and retrain the Persian artillery. From his very first mission in Persia, the modernisation of the army by Robert and his men proved to be highly successful; the Safavids scored their first crushing victory over the Ottomans in the Ottoman-Safavid War, ending the war on highly favourable terms. When Anthony Shirley left Persia, Robert remained in Persia with fourteen other Englishmen. There, in February 1607, he married Sampsonia, a Christian Circassian lady of the Circassian nobility of Safavid Persia, who became known in the west by the name Lady Teresia Sampsonia Sherley. In 1608 Shah Abbas sent Robert on a diplomatic mission to James I of England and to other European princes for the purpose of uniting them in a confederacy against the Ottoman Empire. Sherley travelled with a suite of 18 persons first to Poland, where he was received by Sigismund III Vasa, and from there to Germany, where he received the title of Count Palatine and was appointed to Knight of the Holy Roman Empire by Emperor Rudolph II. From Germany, he travelled to Florence and then Rome, where he was received by Pope Paul V. He then went to Spain before returning to Persia in 1613. He returned to Europe in 1615, residing in Madrid. His third journey to Persia was undertaken in 1627 when he accompanied Sir Dodmore Cotton, the first British ambassador to the Kingdom of Persia, but soon after reaching the country he died at Qazvin. After being initially buried there, his remains were later moved from Qazvin to Rome in 1658 by his wife following her retirement to a convent in the same city attached to Santa Maria della Scala.

A copy of this engraving was exhibited at The fascination of Persia exhibition held at the Rietberg Museum in Zurich in 2013 and published in the exhibition catalogue Alex Langer (ed): The fascination of Persia. Zurich: Scheidegger & Spiess, 2013. Figure 35.