(f. att.) Jaspar Beckx Portrait of Don Miguel de Castro, Emissary of Congo Netherlands (c. 1643) Oil on Panel; 75 x 62 cm Statens Museum Kunst http://collection.smk.dk/#/en/detail/KMS7
Ozias Humphrey
Portrait of Baron Nagell’s Running Footman (name unknown or lost)
Netherlands (c. 1788-95)
Pastel on paper; 725 x 610 mm
This three-quarter length portrait in pastel shows the running footman of Baron Anne Willem Carel van Nagell van Ampsen (1756–1851), Dutch Ambassador to London from 1788 to 1795. A running footman could be expected to serve as a messenger and to accompany his employer’s coach. His role was, then, emphatically public, announcing the presence of his employer to the world. Baron Nagell was known for his especially flamboyantly dressed servants and the livery worn by this figure reflects the red, white and blue of the Dutch flag. A contemporary reference to his first court appearance in London in March 1788 noted that ‘he makes a splendid appearance with his footmen in scarlet and silver and a gay page or Running footman was vastly well Received’.
This portrait is unusual in that it focuses so intently on the features of an unaccompanied, individual servant, rendered life-scale. It sits within a tradition of strongly characterised portraits of especially favoured or long-serving servants, generally commissioned by their employers.
read more at Tate.org
Attributed to Kano Domi
“Barbarians From the South” Namban Byobu (detail)
Japan, Edo period (c. 1570-1600)
Afro-French Fencing Master Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, and Transgender Woman Chevalier d'Éon duel at at Carlton House on 9 April 1787 in the presence of the Prince of Wales, sundry gentlemen and fencing aficionados.
Joseph Bologne was the son of French planter Georges Bologne and an enslaved woman named Nanon. He was was a champion fencer, virtuoso violinist, and conductor of the leading symphony orchestra in Paris. You can read more about him here.
Charles-Geneviève-Louis-Auguste-André-Timothée d'Éon de Beaumont, Chevalier d'Éon, was a French spy, diplomat, and veteran of the Seven Years’ War. D'Éon appeared publicly as a man and pursued masculine occupations for 49 years; after 1777, she lived for 33 more years as a woman. You can read more about her here.
Jan Luyken
An Envoy’s Audience with the King of Thailand
Netherlands (1687)
etching, 177mm × 140mm.
Sir Joshua Reynolds
Portrait of Scyacust Ukah (Ostenaco)
England (1762)
Scyacust Ukah’, or Ostenaco as he is now known, was the leader of a group of Cherokee who came to England on a diplomatic mission. The three-man delegation attracted intense interest during their stay in London, which culminated in an audience with George III.
Ostenaco wears around his neck a silver gorget, a military mark of rank given by the British to Native Americans they regarded as allies. He also wears a medal the British had awarded him after a recent peace treaty.
Jaspar Beckx
Portrait of Don Miguel de Castro, Emissary of Congo
Netherlands (c. 1643)
Michiel van Musscher
Thomas Hees with his Nephews, Jan and Andries Hees, and Thomas, a Servant
Netherlands (1687)
Oil on Canvas, 76 x 63 cm.
Thomas Hees served as a diplomat in Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli. Among other duties, he negotiated the purchase of the freedom of Dutch slaves and protested against the privateering of Dutch ships. Hees had himself portrayed in a relaxed pose, smoking, and surrounded by the treasures he had acquired in North Africa. An inscription on the back of this painting gives his servant’s name and age: ‘Thomas the negro,17 years old.’
Jean Baptiste Vanmour
The Meal in Honor of Ambassador Cornelis Calkoen
Netherlands (c. 1727)
Oil on canvas; 90cm × 120cm.
As part of the ceremony, Calkoen attended a meeting in the divan or council chamber of the palace, after which he and his retinue were offered a meal by the grand vizier. This meal is shown here. At centre, across from the grand vizier, Calkoen sits on a low stool, flanked by two interpreters. The sultan could listen (unnoticed) behind the small grilled window above –hence called ‘the Eye of the Sultan’.
Soon after the defeat of the Spanish Armada, A Morroccan Embassy arrived in England. The best-known evidence of such contacts can be seen in the haunting portrait of Abd el-Ouahed Messaoud ben Mohammed Anoun, ambassador to Elizabeth from Muly Hamet [sic] (the only claimant to the throne of Morocco to survive the real Battle of Alcazar), which now hangs in the Shakespeare Institute at Stratford-Upon-Avon. El-Ouahed, who spent six months in London during 1600, was sent to the court to negotiate an alliance against Spain. Muly Hamet wanted an English fleet to help him invade Spain, a design too quixotic for Elizabeth's pragmatic diplomacy; his ambassador had to be content with trade agreements instead.
Performing Blackness on English Stages, 1500-1800 By Virginia Mason Vaughan (p.57)
You can read an overview of the Anglo-Moroccan alliance here. The alliance lasted for more than a century, and diplomatic missions back and forth were necessary to maintain it. Another portrait was made in the 1730s of Admiral Abdelkader Pérez, another ambassador from Morocco to the monarch of England:
medievalpoc reblogged
Unknown artist
The first Japanese Embassy to Europe
Germany? (1586)
Top, from left to right: Julião Nakaura, Father Mesquita, Mancio Itō.
Bottom, from left to right: Martinho Hara, Miguel Chijiwa.
Unknown artist
The Japanese embassy with Pope Gregory XIII
Italy? (1585)
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The Tensho embassy left Nagasaki in 1582, and went on to Goa (India) before arriving in Lisbon in 1584. Among the nobles they met in Europe were King Philip II of Spain, Francesco I de’ Medici, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Pope Gregory XIII and his successor Pope Sixtus V.
They arrived back in Japan in 1590, and were subsequently ordained as the first ever Japanese Jesuit fathers by Alessandro Valignano.
They were not, in fact, the first Japanese to visit Europe. The earliest one on record we have so far is Bernardo the Japanese, a disciple of St Francis Xavier who did a one-way trip to Europe in 1553. But there’s every chance they’ll discover someone else!
Abu'l Qasim Firdausi
Nushirvan Receives Mihras, Envoy of Caesar
Iran (c. 1300)
Folio from a Shahnama (Book of Kings). Ink, opaque watercolor, and gold on paper; 5.5 x 12.4 cm.
The Byzantine emperor, concerned about the possibility of an invasion by the mighty Iranian forces, sent an embassy under his general Mihras carrying a letter of conciliation and lavish gifts, and a peaceful agreement was eventually concluded. In the miniature, the letter–which assumes a special significance in this context, since the Ilkhanid rulers and the Catholic pope exchanged similar missives–and the gifts in the form of gold cups are shown at the foot of the shah's throne. Mihras is represented as a type of Crusader, something between a warrior and a priest, wearing a helmet and holding a cross.
skemono submitted to medievalpoc:
Louis XIV receives a Siamese embassy, September 1686.
Credits, in order:
Nicolas III de Larmessin, around 1686. Saint-Martin-de-Ré, Musée Ernest Cognacq.
French almanac, 1687. Louvre, Rothschild Collection.
French almanac, 1687. Louvre, Rothschild Collection.
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