The sitter was born 10 October 1865 as Rafael María José Pedro Francisco Borja Domingo Gerardo de la Santíssima Trinidad Merry del Val y Zulueta at the Spanish Embassy in London the second of the four sons of Rafael Carlos Merry del Val. His mother was Sofia Josefa de Zulueta (died 1925), elder daughter of Pedro José de Zulueta, count of Torre Díaz, of the London bank of Zulueta & Co., and his wife, Sophia Ann Wilcox, who was of Scottish and Dutch ancestry. The Zuluetas were an old Basque family ennobled as counts de Torre Díaz in the nineteenth century. The del Vals were an Aragonese family, claiming descent from a twelfth-century Breton crusader; the surname Merry came from a line of Irish merchants from County Waterford who settled in the late eighteenth century in Seville.
Merry del Val lived in England until 1878. He was ordained a priest on 30 December 1888, after receiving a doctorate in philosophy in Rome at the Pontifical Gregorian University. In 1891 he became a privy chamberlain and member of the Pontifical family, having served as a secretary in nunciatures. In 1902 he was the papal representative to the coronation of King Edward VII accompanied by Eugenio Pacelli, the future Pope Pius XII.
Before becoming a cardinal, he served as the secretary of the papal conclave of 1903 that elected Pope Pius X who is said to have accepted his election through Merry del Val’s encouragement. Pius X later appointed him Pontifical Secretary of State where he served from 1903 to 1914. After the death of Pope Benedict XV in 1922, who preferred Pietro Gasparri to be Secretary of State, Cardinal Merry del Val was retained by Pope Pius XI in the role of Secretary of the Holy Office, a post he held from 1914 until 26 February 1930, when he died in the Vatican aged 64, during an operation for appendicitis.
Bibliography:
Frances Alice Monica Forbes, Rafael, Cardinal Merry del Val, A Character Sketch, 1932
John Patrick Carroll Abbing, Cardinal Merry del Val, 1937
Marie Cecilia Buehrle, Rafael, Cardinal Merry del Val, 1957.
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A possible third version of the portrait said to be in Spain.
Muller-Ury painted Cardinal Merry del Val in 1907 at the time he was painting his first three quarter portrait of Pope Pius X. Muller-Ury painted the picture of Merry del Val – almost certainly for exhibition purposes – to go with the Pius X. The New York Herald, September 29, 1907 quoted Muller-Ury as saying that ‘…he was so well pleased that he commissioned me to paint a portrait of his mother [present whereabouts unknown], and a second one of himself.’ The second may be the 1908 version catalogued here, but there may be a portrait in Spain.
The inscribed photograph which the sitter presented the artist in July 1907.
In reviewing the exhibition at Knoedler, in which portraits of Pius X and Bishop Kennedy were exhibited, the New York Sun, January 18, 1908, said ‘…More subtle and by far the best of the three heads is his presentiment of Cardinal Merry del Val, half English, half Spanish of blood, Roman Catholic to the centre of his soul. A half smile is caught at eye and lip; perhaps the puissant Cardinal was amused at the obvious artificiality of the pose of his hand, upon a finger of which is a churchly jewel. But there is psychology in this portrait, none in that of the Pope.’ The New York Evening Mail, the same day, reported that the portrait of Merry del Val ‘…shows the diplomat of the Vatican at his keenest and craftiest. In him the Spaniard and the schemer appear.’ This probably first version was clearly kept by Muller-Ury for exhibitions.
