About this Item
Quarto, ca. 27x19,5 cm (10 ½ x 7 ¾ in). Four pages; brown ink on cream laid paper with fleur-de-lis watermark, written in a legible hand. Paper aged and slightly faded, with fold marks, but the text is still bright and easy distinguishable. Beautiful period style crimson elaborately gilt tooled custom made full morocco clamshell box with cloth chemise. The letter in very good condition. Remarkable and Very Important Primary Source for Russian-Western European relations in the 17th century. This is a very important anonymous letter: "Curiosissimi Costumi de'Sig.i Ambasciatori Moscoviti, che ora si trovano in Livorno per passare all'Ambasciata di Venezia." According to the historians who worked with two other known copies of the letter (see below: Attribution of "Relatione d'Alcuni Costumi") it was written by a first-hand witness of the embassy, somehow involved with it, most likely between the 19th and 23rd of December, 1656. The written dialect of the letter's language indicates that the author was a common person from Livorno, possibly of Sicilian origin. The letter vividly describes the Muscovite diplomatic delegation, staying in Livorno on its way to Venice in the winter of 1656. It was an official embassy to the Doge of Venice from the Russian Tsar Alexey Mikhailovich (1629-1676) sent in 1656-57 and headed by the Pereyaslavl governor Ivan Ivanovich Chemodanov (before 1618 - after 1657) and Deacon A. Postnikov. The goal of the embassy was to strengthen political and commercial relations with Venice, to negotiate the joint struggle against the Turks, to give Venetians the permission to trade in Archangelsk, and to borrow money from the Doge. A small "side task" was to: "to sell a hundred poods (1600kgs) of rhubarb and some sable furs for a thousand roubles." Overall the embassy didn't achieve its goals as it didn't manage to get the money from the Doge and to successfully sell the stale rhubarb and the sable furs (some of which were damaged during the voyage to Italy and some were sold to feed the embassy itself). The embassy left Venice in March 1657 and went back to Russia through Switzerland, Germany and Holland. In spite of a lack of diplomatic skills, Chemodanov's embassy left its trace in history. Its members became the first Russians to travel to Italy by sea, around northern Europe. They left Archangelsk on the 12th of September, 1656; passed the "Northern Nose" (North Cape), the "land of the Danish king," "Icelant, or Icy island (Iceland)," "the lands of Hamburg and Bremen," Scotland, Holland, "possessions of the English King," French and Spanish lands - "all those countries we passed from the left," and arrived in Livorno on the 24th of November the same year. During the voyage they suffered from storms in the Atlantic, when most of the state goods were damaged. The embassy's appearance in Italy was met with great interest and curiosity; the official relations from both the Russian and Italian sides noted crowds of people accompanying the Muscovites wherever they went. Our letter "Relatione d'Alcuni Costumi" reveals what impression the Russian diplomats made on the Italians, e.g. "they are dressed in cloth of cotton wool as they are afraid of cold, which is very common in their country"; "they beat their servants with their own hands, and so brutally that four of five of them was on the verge of death, and one ran away and is still not found"; "they have sable skins for 100 thousand skudi and also a big amount of rhubarb, caviar and salted fish, and it stinks so much, that people get sick, and where they were for one hour it stinks afterwards for twelve hours. "The Muscovites often seemed barbaric to the inhabitants of Livorno, as they all slept together, "and the Ambassador with them too, as he was afraid to fall off the bed"; they liked wine, but "put it all in one barrel, not distinguishing whether it is white or red or any sort of wine"; when the Governor took them around the city in a carriage, local people we. Seller Inventory # MB5
Contact seller
Report this item
