Professor Alexandria Brown-Hejazi, who teaches a class on art and science in the Renaissance, published an article in the March 2025 issue of the prestigious art history journal The Burlington Magazine. She told us about her exciting discovery:
This article presents a document I discovered in the state archives in Rome in 2018. I was participating in an archival training seminar led by Notre Dame that prepared students for working in Italian archives at the start of their dissertations. While completing my PhD in Art History at Stanford, my dissertation explored artistic exchange between Safavid Iran and Italy, looking particularly at embassies sent from Isfahan to Venice, Florence, and Rome in the 1600s. While hunting for documents related to this exchange, I discovered the last will and testament of Teresia Shirley, the wife of one of the Safavid ambassadors. It is a very exciting find as it highlights the voice of Teresia, who was an essential and powerful figure in the embassies, but who usually gets overlooked. I am hoping this discovery will contribute to our knowledge of how women in the early modern world were agents of power in the diplomatic world as well.