On February 19, 1715, Louis XIV received at Versailles a Persian embassy led by Mohammed Reza Bey; as Premier Peintre du Roi, Coypel was commissioned to paint this grand occasion.  According to separate accounts of two eyewitnesses, the Marquis de Dangeau and the Duc de Saint-Simon, during the reception Coypel was stationed behind the Sun King's throne, the best vantage point from which to capture the scene he had been entrusted to record.¹ 

It is likely that the present work, identified by an old inscription on the verso as a portrait of the Ambassador Mohammed Reza Bey, was made by Coypel as a study for the much grander composition.  Though it would be quite unique in Coypel’s oeuvre for its small size, the great sense of immediacy and liveliness that the artist created here – as seen in the tiny white highlights of paint that make the ambassador’s eyes appear to glisten, the turn of ambassador’s head, his slightly parted lips, and loosely painted cloak – does on a more intimate scale what Coypel did in his other highly expressive Rubensian heads, most notably his Democritus of 1692 (Louvre, Paris), where the artist also used the tin🦂y white dashes of paint to hig🍌hlight the philosopher's eyes.

1 See N. Garnier, Antoine Coypel 1661 - 1722, Paris 1989, p. 169.