“Due to the attitude to problems, there is a feeling that you do not exist in Italy, but that you live. Grand Duke Vasily II rejects the Union of Florence

Felix Moiseevich Lurie was born in 1931 in Leningrad. Graduated from the Leningrad Mining Institute, Ph.D. Prose writer, publicist. Laureate of the literary award "Northern Palmyra". Lives in St. Petersburg.

Russians in Florence

Chapter from the book "Florence - the city of geniuses: a non-tourist guide".

Russian merchants and diplomats have been in Europe since ancient times. The first to leave documentary evidence in the summer of 1439 were the clergy who visited Florence, invited by Pope Eugene IV to continue the meetings of the Basel (Ferrara-Florence) Ecumenical Council. In the Church of Santa Maria Novella, Metropolitan Isidore of Moscow (Metropolitan 1436-1441. ├ 1462), at the head of the Russian embassy, ​​listened to speakers who called for reconciling Orthodoxy with Catholicism and uniting the Christian Church under the auspices of the Vatican. Evidence of this event has been preserved with a description of the disputes that took place at the meetings of the cathedral and the “walking of the embassy” from Moscow through all of Europe to Florence and back. Russian clergymen were struck by Florence more than other European cities they had seen. Isidore, a passionate supporter of the unification of churches, did not hesitate to sign the Union of Florence. Upon his return to Moscow, he was imprisoned, from where the former metropolitan managed to escape in 1441. Once in Rome and converted to Catholicism, Isidore became a cardinal. His signature under the text of the union is still kept in the Laurenzian today.

Someone from the embassy kept travel records, called "The Walk to the Florentine Cathedral." This is the first description of European cities made by a Russian author. Twenty-one versions of the Journey have come down to us. Let's use the academic list and give a description of Florence from it:

“The same glorious city of Florenza is very great, and such is not found in the prescribed cities; the goddesses in it are beautiful and majestic, and the chambers in it are built with white stone, the velmi are high and cunning. And in the midst of that city flows a river great and fast Velmi, named Rna; and a stone bridge was built on the river toi, a wide velmi, and on both sides of the bridge there were floors. But in that city there is a goddess velka and in it a thousand beds, and on the last bed there are wonderful featherbeds and dredge blankets; the same hasrad is arranged by a low-powered newcomer and strange and other lands; the same ones are fed and clothed and shod, and washed, and dry honestly; and whoever can do it, then strike the hail with his forehead, and go praising God; and in the midst of those beds a service is arranged, and they sing all day long. There is a yin monastery, built with a white stone cunningly and command firmly, and the gates are iron; and the goddess is great chudna, and there are 40 services in it; and there are many relics of the saints, and many other robes with stone, gold and pearls. There are 40 elders in it, but their life does not originate from the monastery, never, no miyans go to them if they do; their needlework is as follows: the saints sew with gold and silk on shrouds. In the same monastery there was a lord who was also our former one, and she was all in the video ... In the same city, stones and Aksamites with gold are made. The goods of all of whom are many and orchards of oilseeds, and those oils are woody oil. And now in that city there is a miraculous icon, an image of the pure Mother of God; and there are in front of that icon in the goddess of people healed for 6 thousand, they are waxed, in the image of those people who are shot, or if they are blind, or lame, or without hands, or a great man. Arriving on a horse, make such a arrangement, as if they are standing, or an un, or a wife, or a maiden, or a youth, or what kind of damage he had, or what an enemy he was in, and how he was forgiven, or what an ulcer, so he became ripe . And they make the same scarlet cloth. The same view of the ancient cedars and cypresses; cedar is like a Russian pine, it looked a lot like, and cypress with a bark like a linden, and with needles like a spruce, but a little curly and soft needles, and the cones looked like a pine cone. And in that city the goddess is built great, the stone of the sea is white and black; and a pillar and a belfry were built at the goddess of that goddess, the mormor stone is also white, and our mind does not understand her cunning; and hdihom that ladder and the score of steps 400 and 50 (San Miniato al Monte. - F. L.).

Months Julia in the 5th cathedral of the former great, and then writing letters of collection of their faith, in the Holy Trinity and signed by Pope Eugenia, and Tsar John of Greece, and all the guards, and the metropolitans signed on the letters each with their own hand.

In the same city I saw silk worms, and even then I saw how to eat silk from them.

On the same month, at 6, Pope Eugenia served mass with unleavened bread in the cathedral sanctuary in the name of the Most Pure Mother of God, and with him 12 guardinals, and 93 biskupes, including caplons and deacons. The king of Greece, John, who sits on the prepared place for him, sees their services, and all his boyars are with him; and the same metropolitan sitting in the prepared places in the seven hierarchal rank, so do the archimandrites, and the hartofilakov, and the priests, and the deacons, each in their dignity, and the same Kalugerov, sitting in the prepared places, serve in vain; it is the same with the laity from Rus'; those places are high up through people seeing. There are a lot of people that let them go, then there would be many strangled people; but my father's military hozhahu in silver armor, and clubs in their hands trembling; and not let it come; and now the candles of the vita are lit tremblingly in their hands, and those to the Mohahu people so that they do not advance. And at the service, he began to sing a prayer service with his people, and after the prayer service, the pope sat in the middle of that cathedral on the high throne prepared for him, and next to him reposed amboi. And from the Latins to the curtains by the name of Julian, and Metropolitan Visarion of Nikei, and vzinesosha to read and write; and honored Julian the Datinian charter in a public voice, and after that the metropolitan began honoring the Greek charter. And after reading the letters, the pope blessed the people. And then the father's deacons began to sing praises to the pope, and after that the king's deacons began to sing praises to the king. And then begin to sing the whole cathedral in Latin and all the people, and begin to rejoice for not having forgiveness from the Greeks.

And the king went from the gathering from Florenza on the month of August 26. And seeing him off with honor, all the biskupi, and all the people of that city, with trumpets and pipes; and the sky descended over him, 12 people were dressed up; and the horse under him, walk two ratmans of the big hail of that.

On the 24th of September, the Pope served in the church of St. John the Baptist. And in the service of the guards and the artsybiskups and biskups, they were dragged into robes, many of them. And then the Russian Isidore sat down and the Greek 12 in the same robes, and the pope sat on the throne of the golden hierarchial dignity. And the bishop ascended to a high place, in the name of Andrey, and began to honor the letter of blessing, and cursing the collection of bases. The Alamanian lands did not come to the council to the pope, but made a council for themselves, not wanting to obey the pope; and that dividing them damn.

And on the same day, Isidore and Avramia, the lord of Russia, was blessed by the pope to Rus', and went from Florenza to Rus' on the month of September at 6.

The author shared his impressions of the Florentine churches and monasteries, from the city itself, described the procedure for accepting and signing the union, solemn services in the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore and the Baptistery of San Giovanni Battista, the departure of the participants of the Ecumenical Council. It is appropriate to recall the fresco by Benozzo Gozzoli in the Palazzo Medici-Ricardi depicting the procession of the participants in the Cathedral. The text mentions the Byzantine Emperor John VII Palaiologos, Patriarch Joseph II of Constantinople, Pope Eugene IV (pontificate 1431–1447), and Patriarch Vissarion of Nicaea. Supporters of Eugene IV, who did not recognize the decisions of the Council of Basel (1431-1449) and left its meetings, gathered in Florence. The friendship of the pope with the ruler of Florence, Cosimo Sr., contributed to the success in many actions of these major figures in European history. Without the support of the guardian of the republic, perhaps Eugene IV would not have been able to stay on the papal throne.

Two more testimonies of participants in the Russian embassy have been preserved: “The Exodus of Abraham of Suzdal” and “The Tale of the Eighth Council”, but they are of no interest to us.

Approximately half a century after the departure of Metropolitan Isidore to Moscow in Florence at the end of the 15th century, the Russian monk, writer and publicist Maxim Grek (1475–1556), who shared the views of Fra Girolamo Savonarola, who demanded the restoration of Christian virtues, lived and improved his education at the monastery of San Marco. In Moscow, he spoke out against the "debauchery" of the churchmen. He was accused of deliberately distorting the translations of sacred books and conspiring with the Turkish ambassador, for which, by decision of the Cathedral Court, he was sent to a twenty-six-year exile.

On August 23 and 24, 1698, the stolnik Pyotr Andreevich Tolstoy (1645–1729), sent by Peter I on a trip to Europe, stopped in Florence. Here are some interesting sketches from his diary entries:

“Florence is a great place between great mountains out of the blue. And the Grand Duke lives in it, that is, the Grand Duke, who has a crown, that is, crowned, has other considerable places under him, and his dominion is considerable and populous.

Near the very site of Florence, a stone city of ancient construction with stone towers and passable gates of ancient fashion, but of considerable craftsmanship.

In Florence there are few houses of the most sizable proportions, which would be of the most sizable proportions: all the houses of the Florentine ancient building. The entire city of Florence is paved with stone. And there are high chambers, three and four dwellings in height, and the structure is simple, not according to architecture.

A considerable river flows through Florence, which is called Arni. Four great stone bridges were built across that river, on stone pillars, between which one very large one, about which I wrote above in my book, on which a silver row is built.

There are more than 200 monasteries and churches in Florence, which have a fair amount of decoration and are rich in silver and all kinds of church utensils.

In Florence, the people are clean and very welcoming to the Farestier (foreigners.- F. L.). Dresses are worn by French honest people, and other persons like a Roman dress; and the merchants wear the same dress as the Venetian merchants - black; and the female sex in Florence is cleaned in the Roman way.

Honest people and rich merchants ride in fair carts and carriages; and there are many horses in Florence; also wives and maidens ride in corets, well cleaned up, on good horses.

There are a lot of rows in which merchants and artisans sit in Florence and there is enough of all kinds of goods; there are also many artisans of all kinds, and most of all Florence boasts of skill that they make all sorts of things, great and small, from pink marbles beautifully, flowers and living creatures, beautifully, as if picturesque.

In Florence, bread, and meat, and all living creatures are inexpensive, and there is plenty of that; also fish are plentiful and inexpensive; and all sorts of fruits are plentiful and very cheap, and moreover, there are a lot of fair grapes, from which fair wines are made, which are glorious Florence wines all over the world; and there are a lot of them, white and red, which are immensely tasty and intoxicating; and they buy them cheaply there, and when they buy them, they take them to distant places for the glory, that there are glorious Florence wines.

Osterium (hotel. - F. L.) in Florence there are many, in which hefty chambers, and beds, and tables, and chairs, and armchairs, and fair beds, and tablecloths, and sheets, and white towels; also the food and drink of the farestir is plentiful and plentiful.

The vile people are devout, political and zealously respectful and truthful.

There are many pillars in Florence, on which, in memory of ancient past times, glorious people, persons, carved from alabaster and white stones, are placed, and on others bronze horses are made with glorious works. In Florence there are not in many places fantans, which are spoiled, but they are of good workmanship, but they are not the same as in Rome, and not all fountains in Florence have water flowing. In Florence, there are many fine masters, painters of considerable Italian skill, who paint well and charge 50 or more gold coins for one small image.

The restrained description of Tolstoy is interrupted by admiration for the cathedral, the basilicas of the Palazzo Pitti. It is not possible to establish where Tolstoy stayed (“the osteria, which is called San Lunci”).

About a year after Tolstoy's visit, a group of Russian diplomats from the Grand Embassy arrived in Florence. Peter I, having received news of the Streltsy rebellion, interrupted his trip to Europe and hastily returned to Moscow, having visited only Holland and Germany. Only a part of the embassy participants made the entire planned path, among them was Prince Boris Ivanovich Kurakin (1676–1727), the future ambassador to Rome, London, Paris, etc. Presumably, he is the author of the “Journal of Travels in Germany, Holland and Italy in 1697–1699 years, led by the Russians at the Great Embassy, ​​to the rulers of different countries of Europe. We quote from it the notes concerning Florence:

“On the 27th [June 1698] they came to Florence to rest, the city is large, the streets are unclean, the houses are of elegant construction, the windows are paper, rarely glass.

In the church I was at St. John's, a fair building, in one limit of 60 inextinguishable candles with lamps, 50 silver candlesticks, silver angels with candles on the walls, a carved gilded ceiling. There is also the Church of the Most Holy Theotokos, great, all of marble.

I immediately saw a church that has been under construction for 96 years, and half of it is still unfinished, everything inside is made of carved marble and jasper, everything is cut stone into stone, such work that it is impossible to believe: one letter is cut out for three weeks, and until now it has become 22 million shtuts (scud) or efimki.

He was right there with the senator in the house, great, five chambers were decorated with a letter, 15 chambers were decorated with colored damask, 2 tapestries, 5 different velvets, 2 marble, the best carved gilded, marvelous mirrors one and a half fathoms, they were painted with skillful craftsmanship; he has a library with two slotted globes, the greatness itself is cut and gilded.

I was right there in the yard where horses are taught; was in the yard, where all sorts of animals, lions, leopards.

Was at the Prince of Florence in the courtyard (Palazzo Pitti. - F. L.), where all sorts of things are collected, is called a gallery; the first thing I saw was an altar, made of marble of different colors, in that church, which they have been building for 96 years; a chamber with divine letters, another with portcelia, a chamber with mathematical instruments, two large globes, a chamber with letters, here is a round table, which was made by 15 people for 30 years, several thousand worth of gold. The casket is set in gold with stones, emeralds, and yachts; two jasper tables, on them are bone vessels, marvelous workmanship. In the same chamber, a stand with crystal vessels and jasper stones, set in gold. Right there in the chamber is an emerald with earth, as they are born from nature; here is a turquoise with a fist, the person of the king is created; there are enough gun chambers. Glorious all over the world diamond, set in iron, 148 carats; at the throne there is a golden board with stones, Velma is rich, for a new church that has been under construction for 96 years; a great stand, in it are vessels of gold.

Prince Florensky had, in the yard lies a stone magnet, two fathoms around, up to the waist of a man. There were cypress trees, fountains, a bowl of one stone, 15 sazhens around; there were, where the birds are different, 5 strophokamils. Immediately they saw a horse that has a mane 11 sazhens long, measured it myself.”

Not a word about painting, perhaps because in Russia at that time there was no secular painting, except for parsunny (portrait). We have given three of the earliest descriptions of Florence, belonging to the Russian people. The first author paid the main attention to temples, rituals, the Florentine Cathedral, the second - to architecture, the third - to decorations and jewelry.

As you know, until the second half of the 19th century, private individuals needed the permission of the monarch to leave Russia abroad. Some did not dare to apply, others were refused, the trip was allowed mainly to aristocrats with sonorous surnames or large industrialists. There were few Russians traveling around Europe, and they immediately attracted the attention of the natives.

In the late autumn of 1775, the Florentines drew attention to the Russian millionaire, the owner of the Ural factories, Nikita Akinfievich Demidov (1724–1789), who was walking around the city. This was his second trip to the Apennine Peninsula. A talented young sculptor Fyodor Ivanovich Shubin (1740–1805) accompanied the gentleman among the numerous servants, “in order to more usefully examine the monuments of antiquity, preserved by time.” This voyage is captured by the following record of the minutes of the meeting of the Council of the Imperial Academy of Arts dated February 27, 1776:

“A letter was heard from Mr. State Councilor of the Academy, Honorary Member Nikita Akinfievich Demidov, in which he sent as a gift to the Academy an alabaster likeness taken from the famous bronze church gates in Florence, made in ancient times by the famous artist Jean de Boulogne. This similarity to Mr. Belyaev, accepting to write in the register of immovable things and send a letter of thanks on behalf of the Academy to Mr. Honorary Free Community Member. And so that such a worthy gift in honor of the gentleman who bestowed in favor of the arts could be placed in a decent place at the Academy, then Mr. Adjutant Rector Vest, taking upon himself such a semblance, examining to correct, under his authority, the damage that happened along the way.

After the restoration by Shubin's teacher Professor Nicolas Gillet (1709-1791) of the casts from the Gates of Paradise, performed by Lorenzo Ghiberti for the Baptistery of San Giovanni Battista, they were placed in the storerooms of the Academy of Arts. There, the casts would have been lost among the plaster models, but the president of the Academy of Arts, Count A. S. Stroganov, who at the same time “corrected” the duties of the chairman of the Commission on the construction of the Kazan Church, having once seen these casts, did not forget about their existence. Alexander Sergeevich visited Florence and remembered “the Florentine doors that struck him.” As soon as they started finishing the facades and interiors of the Kazan Cathedral, Stroganov, at a meeting of the Academy Council on March 4, 1805, announced that a contract had been signed with the foundry and chaser master Evdokimov and the artist Sokolov for finishing the doors of the main entrance of the cathedral, “which are made of alabaster in the Academy of Arts ". Approach the superbly executed bronze copy, take a look at the St. Petersburg display of the creation of the great Ghiberti, it is 550 years old. Michelangelo himself, jealous of the work of his colleagues, called the Gibertius doors "Paradise gates". He was shocked by the perfect construction of compositions with an impeccably thought-out perspective, the skill of their execution.

Between two Italian travels of N. A. Demidov, Nikolai Nikitich Demidov (1773–1828), the most prominent Russian Florentine, was born in his family. The representative of the richest family, the envoy of Russia to the Tuscan court, the most educated person, Nikolai Nikitich devoted the second half of his life to charity and patronage, dividing fabulous sums between Russia and Italy. Of course, Russia received more, but Italy bestowed honors on him. Grateful Florentines elected Demidov an honorary citizen of the city, named the square (Piazza Nicola Demidoff) overlooking the Arno embankment after him, and erected a marble monument dedicated to him by Lorenzo Bartolini. Along the Arno embankment, the Palazzo Serristori stretched for a whole block. Its butt faces Demidoff Square. It housed the residence of Nikolai Nikitich, later the palace was owned by Napoleon's brother Joseph Bonaparte (1768–1844), where he died. Today, a part of the palazzo is occupied by the “Demidoff Institute - an elementary male school and orphanage”. Its premises overlook Via San Niccolo, parallel to the Arno embankment, and a small palace square. Nikolai Nikitich founded an art museum and an art gallery in Florence, in which he collected works by famous artists, very valuable statues of marble and bronze, and a lot of various rarities. He built a charity home for the elderly and orphans at his own expense, allocated special capital for its maintenance, and donated large sums to churches. When facing the facade of Santa Maria del Fiore, the grateful Florentines decorated it with the Demidov family coat of arms.

The heir of Nikolai Nikitich - his son Anatoly (1812-1870) - acquired the principality of San Donato near Florence. Living in Italy for a long time, Anatoly Nikolayevich was engaged in collecting Roman and modern sculpture. He was helped in many ways by the future art critic V. V. Stasov, who acted as secretary. After the death of Anatoly Nikolaevich, all the property of this branch of the Demidovs passed to his nephew, Pavel Pavlovich Demidov (1839–1885). In 1872 he purchased the Pratolino estate. Villa Pratolino was built by Bernardo Buontalenti in 1568-1581 for Bianca Capello, the beloved of Duke Francesco I of Medici. In 1872, Pavel Pavlovich Demidov, with the permission of Alexander II, took the title of Prince of San Donato. Pavel Pavlovich donated significant sums for the maintenance of canteens for the poor and shelters. He and his wife Elena Petrovna, nee Princess Trubetskaya, were elected honorary citizens of Florence.

Along the routes laid by the Demidovs, Russians reached out to the Apennine Peninsula, wanting to see a distant overseas country. Princess Ekaterina Romanovna Dashkova (1744–1810) reached Florence in March 1780. Participant in the palace coup of 1761, lady of state of Empress Catherine II, future president Russian Academy dedicated two paragraphs to Florence in her notes:

“In two days we drove through Parma, Placencia, Modena and more for a long time settled in Florence, where the art gallery, churches, libraries, and natural history study of the Grand Duke kept us for more than a week.

His Highness ordered me to give me several copies not only of local fossils, having duplicates of them, but also of other parts of the world, collected by Cosmas Medicis, whose genius illuminated Italy at the dawn of the revival of science.

The notes of the ambitious Dashkova contain mainly descriptions of magnificent receptions, dinners in her honor, conversations with philosophers and politicians. Florence aroused only philistine curiosity in the princess.

The “Italian Diary of 1781” by Nikolai Alexandrovich Lvov (1751–1803), a talented architect and versatile educated person, has been preserved. The records testify to the interest in the arts shown by Lvov, his original assessments when describing temples, museums, palaces, in the Palazzo Vecchio, the architect was most struck by the collection of clothes of the Medici family, the Palazzo Pitti delighted him: “Palazzo Pitti. A good Rustic building, with a yard finished better than the main façade. Behind the onago there is a large regular garden belonging to this castle, called the grandino de Boboli. There are many good statues in it, especially around the round cage below.

Tsarevich Pavel Petrovich and his young wife Maria Feodorovna in September 1781, under the name of the Counts of the North, went on a trip to European states. For four months they traveled the Apennines, in Florence they were received by the Grand Duke of Tuscany Leopold, the second ruler from the House of Lorraine. The heir to the Russian throne received an excellent education, loved and knew art, and drew well. According to his sketches, the Florentine Vincenzo Brenna completed the project of the Mikhailovsky Castle in St. Petersburg. What Pavel Petrovich and Maria Feodorovna saw in Florence shocked them.

In 1784–1785, our outstanding comedian Denis Ivanovich Fonvizin (1745–1792) visited Florence on short visits. Having an agreement with the St. Petersburg antiquarian and second-hand book dealer Klosterman, he bought works of Italian art for his shops, at the same time acting as a commission agent for the family of the Count Panins. Fonvizin's letters are saturated with all sorts of everyday discontents, in which he constantly grumbles and complains about the lack of comfort, basic hygiene, and his boring pastime.

In 1786–1790, chamberlain Vasily Nikolaevich Zinoviev (1755–1816) traveled around Europe, but his stay in Florence was not reflected in diary entries this travel lover.

Near Piazza Santissima Annunziata, in 1817, the well-known bibliophile, active privy councilor, senator, Count Dmitry Petrovich Buturlin (1763–1829) acquired the Palazzo Montauti-Niccolini (Palace Buturlin), he and his descendants lived in it for a hundred years. Alexander Ivanovich Turgenev (1789–1871), brother of the Decembrist defector Nikolai, often visited Florence. Fulfilling diplomatic missions of the Russian government in Europe, he sought to visit his beloved city. Recall that A. I. Turgenev Nicholas I entrusted the funeral of A. S. Pushkin. The sociable Turgenev met in Florence with the future chancellor, Prince A. M. Gorchakov, the Vielgorsky family, and others.

With the simplification of bureaucratic procedures for travel abroad, an inexhaustible stream of Russians poured into Europe. Writers, artists, composers, historians, philosophers rushed to Florence, in the second half of the 19th - early 20th centuries hundreds of Russians visited it, dozens settled for a long time and forever. A Russian colony, an Orthodox church, and emigrant revolutionary groups appeared in the city. Among them, the most famous are M. A. Bakunin, N. D. Nozhkin and L. I. Mechnikov, the brother of a famous physiologist. There were few of them, they lived in isolation, huddled on the outskirts, they did not leave addresses. The surviving memories are colorless, they are of no interest in relation to the description of Florence, everyday sketches.

A two-story Orthodox church in the name of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker and the Nativity of Christ was built in 1899-1903. designed by M. T. Preobrazhensky, stylized as old Moscow-Yaroslavl churches. The first rector of the Church of the Nativity of Christ, Archpriest Vladimir Levitsky (1843–1923) wrote on November 8, 1899: “If Dante, in one place of his └Hell”, claims that └there is no greater sadness than in her days to remember the days of irretrievably past joy“ , then this truth can also be turned to the opposite meaning: there is no greater joy than to experience sadness, to know that it will not return, or better, speaking in the Gospel, not to remember sorrow for the joy that replaced it. This gospel joy was bestowed by God on the Russians living in Florence on Saturday, October 16th. When they, with all sorts of splendor and solemnity, and most importantly - with genuine Christian enthusiasm, celebrated the laying of their new real Russian church - the first in Italy.

This work began long ago, back in the 70s, at the initiative of the deceased Metropolitan Isidore in Bose, who repeatedly and persistently invited to take care of the implementation of the idea first expressed by the late Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna, who lived in Florence until 1873. Vladyka Isidore, insisting on the construction of a temple with a magnificent purely Russian appearance, and precisely where his namesake, the unfortunate memory of the false metropolitan of Moscow, so shamefully betrayed the honor and independence of Orthodoxy, by accepting the Florentine Union, probably had in mind to make amends for this shame, to restore the honor of Orthodoxy, to show clearly its vitality and stability and all its superiority over the outwardly magnificent Roman Catholicism.

Money for the construction was given by all the noble families who had long lived in Florence and constituted a Russian colony. There have been quite a few Russians in the city since the beginning of the 19th century, when Nikolai Fedorovich Khitrovo, husband of Elizaveta Mikhailovna Khitrovo, a friend of Pushkin, and stepfather of Dolly Fikelmont, also a friend of Pushkin, Vyazemsky and many other most brilliant representatives of Russian culture in the first half of the 19th century. The Buturlins, Demidovs, Uvarovs, and Olsufyevs lived there. The descendants of the Buturlins and Olsufievs live there now, as well as the granddaughter of Archpriest Levitsky - a doctor, artist, poet Nina Adrianovna Kharkevich. And the affairs of the Russian Florentine church are now being handled by Pushkin's great-great-granddaughter - charming, graceful, like a gazelle, Anechka Vorontsova-Turi.

Pushkin is remembered not only in connection with the names of Khitrovo and Fikelmont. Here, in Florence, his classmate Nikolai Korsakov lived and died, who wrote a couplet for his monument before his death:

“Passer-by, hasten to your native country!

Ah, sad to die far from friends.

Korsakov died in 1820. Fifteen years later, another lyceum student, Gorchakov, erected a monument on his grave with this couplet, changing only two letters: instead of “die”, he wrote “die”. And the former lyceum director Engelhardt wrote in his diary: “Yesterday I had a letter from Gorchakov and a drawing of a small monument that he erected to our poor troubadour Korsakov under a dense cypress near church fence in Florence. This sad gift made me very happy” (O. B. Maksimova).

N. F. Khitrovo (1771–1819), major general, served in Florence 1815–1817; his widow is E. M. Khitrovo (1783–1839), daughter of M. I. Kutuzov.

The iconostasis and some cult objects of the lower church came from the Demidov church in San Donato in Polverosa; the iconostasis of the upper church was made with funds donated by Nicholas II. Today the temple plays the role of the center of the Community of Russian Florentines. Sunday services are solemnly held, all Russian Florence flocks to them - mainly the descendants of emigrants. There are not so many of them, but no less than the English, whom we saw at Sunday mass in the chapel of St. Luke of the Basilica Santissima Annunziata. The Orthodox Church is located in a good location inside a green park, is in excellent condition.

It is strange, but in the memoirs and letters of those who visited Florence there are a lot of negative reviews about this great city. No words worthy of Florence could be found from our most remarkable artists O. P. Ostroumova-Lebedeva, A. N. Benois, M. V. Dobuzhinsky; D. I. Fonvizin, P. I. Tchaikovsky, F. M. Dostoevsky, A. A. Blok mercilessly scolded her for trifles unworthy of attention; pale, restrained praises were written by D. S. Merezhkovsky, V. V. Rozanov, and I. M. Grevs, who admired her; A. I. Herzen, A. A. Akhmatova, N. S. Gumilyov hardly noticed her. Almost the only exception is P.P. Muratov, the author of the excellent book Images of Italy. He traveled for a long time in the Apennines, many believe that it was he who discovered Russia's true Italy. Generations were brought up on his book, they read it, it polished the taste, awakened a love for art. A close friend of Muratov, B.K. Zaitsev, wrote about “Images of Italy”: “In Russian literature there is nothing equal to them in terms of the artistry of experiencing Italy, in terms of knowledge and elegance of performance.”

Pavel Pavlovich Muratov (1881–1950) was born in Bobrov, Voronezh province, in the family of a military doctor, graduated from the Cadet Corps, then in 1903 from the Moscow Institute of Railways. Cold rainy Petersburg did not keep the young engineer with architectural beauties, museums, theaters and libraries; he moved to Moscow, where his elder brother, an officer, lived. There he left the engineering field, served as an assistant librarian at the university, curator of the department of fine arts and classical antiquities of the Rumyantsev Museum, wrote essays on the Russian-Japanese war for newspapers.

We know almost nothing about Muratov's childhood, his personal life. The formal things that happened to him in the first thirty years of his life did not at all imply a subsequent one. There was a certain qualitative rebirth, a leap. Pavel Pavlovich, with his talents, accumulated knowledge, impeccable taste and realized work, won a special place of honor in the history of Russian culture, during the triumph of the Silver Age. He owns two outstanding works: the book "Images of Italy" and the creation of the magazine "Sofia". Then there were the front, the Cheka, emigration, hard life in a foreign land and an unknown death in Ireland.

Muratov wrote about Italy with such love and devotion, with such tenderness and quiet passion, with the deepest knowledge and such elegant literary language that hardly anyone can surpass him. Others wrote in such a way that some of them are ashamed - with misunderstanding, irritation, anger. Only a few - with love and gratitude, but no one rose to the level of Pavel Pavlovich Muratov. He opened Italy for Russians, but only those who have been there can truly appreciate his texts.

The Demidovs, who became the princes of San Donato Demidoff in Italy, amazed the Italians with their fabulous wealth, patronage, and charity. The Demidovs especially loved Florence. They made their fortune by exporting rare metals to Europe - the Demidovs owned rich mines and factories in Nizhny Tagil.
The first of the Demidovs to appear in the capital of Tuscany was Nikita Nikitich Demidov (1773-1828). This Demidov preferred a diplomatic career to entrepreneurship and in 1815 moved to Florence, taking the post of Russian envoy at the Tuscan court. The title Prince of San Donato was first introduced in 1840 by the Tuscan Grand Duke Leopold II for Nikita Nikitich's son Anatoly, so that he could marry Mathilde Bonaparte, Napoleon I's niece, without prejudice to her status as a princess.

Among the Russians who lived for a long time in Florence, the Demidov family occupies an exceptional place. The Demidovs lived on a grand scale: their country estate even considered the second most magnificent palace after the palace of the Grand Duke of Tuscany.

The memory of the Demidov patrons is still carefully preserved in Florence. The Demidovs are the only ones to whom the square on the Arno embankment in the San Niccolo quarter is dedicated, and Via della Villa Demidov in the Novoli district, where their country residence was located. The name of the Demidovs is immortalized in the majestic monument to Nikolai Nikitich Demidov. This magnificent monument is located on the square named after Demidov.

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The inscription on the pedestal of the monument reads: "In order for the inhabitants of the San Niccolo quarter to always have before them the living memory of Commander Nikolai Demidov, a tireless and generous benefactor, his son Anatoly presented this monument to the city of Florence in 1870."
The monument was commissioned by the sculptor Lorenzo Bartolini Anatoly Demidov for the park of the family residence, and in 1870 was donated by the customer to the municipality of Florence. Then the city authorities decided to install it on the square bearing the name of Demidov, where it still stands. The place was not chosen by chance: it was on this square in the palace of the Counts of Serristori that Nikolai lived for several years, showing himself to be a generous benefactor and trying to alleviate the plight of the poor population of the San Niccolo quarter.
In the city on the Arno River, Nikolai Nikitich compiled the richest art gallery. He gladly commissioned famous artists own portraits and portraits of family members.

Nikolai Nikitich Demidov (1798-1840). From the collection of A. Tissot Photo

He founded an orphanage and a free school for boys, which taught, among other things, drawing, silk production, weaving, shoemaking and printing. He also took care of the maintenance of a doctor who was supposed to live in the same area and who could be called at any time. The doctor was also required to regularly examine the children of the school.
Nikolai Nikitich died in Florence on April 22, 1828. By his will and with the permission of Emperor Nicholas I, his body was transported from Italy to Russia and interred in Nizhny Tagil. To his two sons, who already represented the sixth generation of the dynasty, Nikolai Demidov left a fortune twice that which he received from his father.
Anatoly Nikolaevich (1812-1870) continued his father's charitable work and, in addition to funding the school and maintaining a doctor, founded a pharmacy where the poor were given free medicines. But on Via del Giardino Serristori in the San Niccolo district there is a nursing home named after Demidov (Residenza Sanitaria Assistenziale Demidoff), on Via San Niccolo above the entrance to the school for poor children, the cast-iron coat of arms of the Demidovs with their motto "Acta non verba" has been preserved - "Deeds, not words." The square and the monument are evidence that the Demidovs were true to this motto, leaving a lasting trace of their presence in Florence with their deeds.
At the Palatine Gallery florentine palace Pitti now hangs a ceremonial portrait of A.N. Demidov by Karl Bryullov.

K.P. Bryullov. Portrait of Anatoly Nikolaevich Demidov on horseback. Photo

Another Florentine philanthropist, Pavel Pavlovich Demidov, 2nd Prince of San Donato (1839-1885), nephew and heir of the childless Anatoly Nikolaevich, opened schools, shelters, arranged cheap canteens for workers. In 1879, the grateful population of Florence presented Demidov with a gold medal with the image of him and his wife and an address delivered by a special deputation. The municipality on this occasion elected the Prince and Duchess of San Donato honorary citizens of Florence.

Louis Gustave Ricard (1823-1873). Pavel Pavlovich Demidov, 1859. Photo

When Pavel Demidov decided to leave Florence in 1880, he donated his home church to the Orthodox Church and sold his magnificent collection at auction. The financial result of the auction was negligible. The San Donato Palace was destroyed.

A.A. Kharlamov (1840-1925). Portrait of four children from the second marriage of Pavel Pavlovich Demidov: Aurora (1873-1904), Anatoly (1874-1943), Maria (1877-1955) and Pavel (1879-1909)). Pratolino, 1883. Photo

Grateful Florence also noted the contribution of Pavel Demidov, who allocated a significant amount for the final decoration of one of the most beautiful cathedrals in the world - the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore.

The coats of arms of donors were placed on the facade of the cathedral. The location and size of the emblems were determined by the amount paid.

The coat of arms of the Demidovs turned out to be one of the largest and in the most honorable place - on the main facade, the first to the right of the central portal.

The daughter of Pavel Pavlovich from his second marriage is Maria Pavlovna Demidova, Princess of San Donato before marriage, and in marriage, Princess Abamelek-Lazareva (1877-1955) is the last representative of the famous family, whose fate was closely connected with Florence. Maria Pavlovna - beautiful, smart and educated, was also an excellent ballerina.
When, at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries, Princess Maria Pavlovna married Prince Semyon Semenovich Abamelek-Lazarev (1857-1916) - one of the richest people Russia, she received as a dowry from her mother the Pratolino family estate, located on the outskirts of Florence. In 1916, Maria Pavlovna became a widow: her husband was killed in the Caucasus. He left his wife a luxurious villa Abamelek in Rome and a large account in an Italian bank. After the October Revolution, all the property of the Demidovs in Russia was nationalized. But significant capital remained in Italian and other European banks on the accounts of Maria Pavlovna, which allowed her, continuing the family tradition, to carry out charitable activities.

N.P. Bogdanov-Belsky. Portrait of M. P. Abamelek-Lazareva, 1900s. State Hermitage

Maria Pavlovna was the headman of the Russian church in Florence. She compiled entire lists of monthly allowances for Russian emigrants, individuals and entire institutions. She helped many people - the Sergius metochion in Paris, the metochion of St. Nicholas in Bari, Athos monks, Valaam monks and many private individuals. The princess supported the choir of Kuban Cossacks created in Florence. The troubles of M.P. Demidova on the arrangement of the destinies of compatriots usually met with a favorable response from the Florentine commune and the University of Florence.
In 1935, in memory of her husband, the princess founded the National House for seriously ill participants in the First World War. In 1939, on the outskirts of Pratolino, she rented housing for the poor, who were left homeless.

Maria Pavlovna with guests in Pratolino, 1913 Photo

The last of San Donato left no heirs, and all her property passed to her nephew, the Yugoslav prince Pavel Karageorgievich. Prince Pavel took the most expensive items from Florence, and he simply abandoned the correspondence of the princess, her archive. And all this would have been lost if the Italians had not picked up these sheets in Russian, which were simply scattered in Pratolino, and had not put it all together for the time being in the archive of the province of Florence.
Good memory of Princess M.P. Demidova is still alive in Florence. Her grave is sacredly preserved in Pratolino, next to the family's home church. There is a marble headstone on the grave, and people still bring flowers here, remembering the hostess and her good deeds...

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The princess, who managed to save substantial funds, maintained the villa in good condition for a long time. She has invested a lot of effort and money in preserving this unique monument history and culture. After the death of the childless princess, the villa, designed by Francesco I Medici in the 16th century, went through several owners and was bought by the Italian state. Now there is a museum here, the building of the villa is surrounded by magnificent gardens with numerous pavilions, sculptures and fountains.

Photo commons.wikimedia.org User:Sailko

A worthy tribute to the memory of the last of San Donato is also the preservation of the archive of M.P. Demidova and his publication. The archive also contains documents relating to the fate of the Abamelek-Lazarev villa in Rome. But that's a completely different story, and one day I'll tell it...

Realnoe Vremya compiles a map of Tatarstan emigration and finds out what it is like to live and work in another country.

Ekaterina Ch. (surname not specified at the request of the interlocutor, - approx. ed.) has been living in Florence for 3.5 years. She moved from Kazan to Italy to study graphic design and photography. She spoke about the similarities between Florence and Kazan, the “bonuses” of divorce from Italians, difficulties in finding work and entertainment, which are practically non-existent in the city, she spoke specifically for the Realnoe Vremya project.

background

I studied at KSU as a historian. I graduated at 21. After that she worked in Kazan, in an environmental company. Here I already like the groom pecked. But I was young, I thought - what else is marriage? I want to see the world!

By that time, I realized that I wanted to do design. My parents told me - provide the second higher education for yourself. But you have to earn money first. And I went to the States to work on ships. I figured out how much my studies would cost me - and purposefully worked for five years.

During this time, I definitely understood: I want to study design in Florence. At the same time, thanks to work on ships, I first met Italy and immediately fell in love with it.

But when I had already paid for everything and arrived, I thought: “God, where am I?”

First impression

In the first six months after the move - euphoria: everything is fine with you, you are fine. Then reality comes. Faced with bureaucracy, medical issues - many begin to freak out from this. Say, here we are, in Russia, so-and-so. But then you remember that you yourself chose this country. Yes, it is different, but it will not work to remake it to your own rules. You can only buy a plane ticket and fly away.

After a while, you finally get used to it and start to enjoy it. A glass of red wine during lunch becomes a normal thing. Life in Italy teaches to turn a blind eye to many things, to be measured, to some extent - to go with the flow. There is no need to rush anywhere: being late there is in the order of things, they will understand you. You can come and just apologize.

Italians track the change of seasons according to the solar calendar. So autumn starts on September 21st, winter on December 21st, spring on March 21st, and summer on June 21st. Moreover, all these changes of seasons are really felt: in the summer until September 21, you can safely swim, and after that it is much colder.

As for cities, it is most expensive to live in Milan. As for me, it looks like Moscow. Rome reminds me of St. Petersburg, and Florence - Kazan. I will not even recommend Venice for life: there is a lot of humidity and crowds of tourists.

“The most expensive thing is to live in Milan. To me, it looks like Moscow.” Photo tochka-na-karte.ru

Options for obtaining a residence permit

Studying is a good way to stay in the country. The second option is to get married. But you should not rush into this: if something goes wrong and you have to get a divorce, the process will drag on for two years. But the Italian pays his wife after the divorce benefits until the end of life (his or her). But you should not count on this, because the Italian still needs to be able to marry himself.

And another opportunity to stay in the country is to open your own business. Taxes are not levied for a year, but then they will have to be paid. Therefore, many open one business, and a year later - a new one. Taxes are high, almost 50% of the profits. Individuals are also decently removed. I have about 30% deducted from my salary.

You can also get a work visa, but this is difficult to do.

Residence Permits

When you come to Italy, not as a tourist, you issue a Permesso di soggiorno (permit to stay). It can be different: Permesso di lavoro - for work, Permesso di studio - for students. Each permesso gives certain rights to work.

Permesso di studio allows you to work temporarily, no more than 40 hours a week. Di lavoro gives you the opportunity to work more hours and, as a plus, free medical care (this is not the case for students).

Of course, you don't need to issue a permesso, but with this card you can safely travel all over the country, across Europe, and get a job. You can't get anywhere with a regular student visa.

To complete the documents, you need to go to the post office. You pay for insurance (about 80 euros) and postal services. Making a permesso costs about 300 euros. Then you go to Questura - you hand over a photo, copies of documents, if required. And there they give out a piece of paper, according to which on a certain day you go to take fingerprints.

Three years ago, fingerprints were not taken, and it was possible to get permesso in a couple of months. Now, with these terrorist attacks, everything has become tougher. Now we have to wait at least six months. While you are waiting for the documents, a temporary "piece of paper" is issued. But it is almost impossible to get a job with her.

You can try to stick your head in some bar and work illegally. Illegals are usually not taken, because if they are caught, the company will have to pay huge fines.

“Of course, you don’t need to issue a permesso, but with this card you can safely travel all over the country, across Europe, and get a job.” Photo vipcalabria.ru

Housing

I was lucky - I quickly found girls with whom to rent an apartment. While I was looking for a job, we lived in an apartment with two rooms (a living room combined with a kitchen and a separate bedroom). My friend lived in a separate room and paid a little more, and I paid a little less and lived in the living room. When I already found a part-time job, we moved to a new apartment. Each of us had our own room with a toilet right in the room. And we paid for it all 900 euros for two. Plus it was a condominium. A condominium is when you pay for cleaning the entrance. This option may or may not be included in the invoices.

Sometimes you can rent a monolocale or palazzo. My friend rents a monolocale (a small apartment of 20 square meters with a small room). She pays about 450 euros plus utilities. But usually they do not like students to settle in them, especially Americans, because they are reckless. Landlords are afraid of all sorts of parties, parties - God forbid, then you will not end up with problems.

I also had a period when I lived alone for half a year in palazzo frescobaldi. I had monolocale. I paid 500 euros for this (all inclusive) plus 20 euros per month for electricity.

Renting a room in a large apartment is always cheaper. Universities also help students find housing. But it’s better not to respond to offers “especially for students” - the prices for such apartments are usually greatly inflated.

Mortgages in Italy are taken, but sluggishly. When there were lyres, everything was wonderful. Now the market is worth it. I have a friend who cannot sell the villa. They are bought, but mostly by foreigners. The Italians themselves prefer to rent housing, because property taxes are high.

Housing and communal services

According to meters for gas and electricity, receipts come every two months, for water - once every four months. Electricity comes out around 80 euros. Water for 1 cube - about 2 euros. Heating in Italy is mainly gas, sometimes there is central heating. On average, in Tuscany in the summer you pay about 60-80 euros for gas.

In winter, all costs rise: electricity will be around 100 euros, and you have to pay about 200-300 euros for gas. This is provided that the boiler operates only in the morning and in the evening. In this case, the air in the apartment will not warm up above 20 degrees. If you want to live like in Africa, you will have to pay at least 500 euros for heating.

The big problem for Italy is that it is cold in winter. It is necessary to prepare for the fact that the temperature in the apartment will be about +18. Now my fiancé and I live in a four-room apartment. It needs to be warmed up, so that the boiler works almost constantly. But the temperature still does not rise above 21 degrees.

“Italians prefer to rent housing because property taxes are high”

The language barrier

When I first arrived, I could only speak a few words in Italian, I mostly used « Google » -translator. All 3.5 years that I live in Florence, I mainly use English language And I hardly speak Italian. Of course, I learn the language, communicate with colleagues for practice, but mostly I communicate in English.

Italy is geared towards tourists. All around businesses that are focused specifically on visitors. So if you speak Russian and Italian, the chance of finding a job is less than if you know English and Russian. To qualify for a position in a large export company, it is better to speak (except in Russian if you are from Russia) Italian and English.

There are free Italian courses. But here you need to be ready to work with migrants, who are much more numerous than before.

Job

They will even hire you with a student permesso. In my experience, with a student permit, I did not work 40 hours a week, it turned out more.

You can find a part-time job if you know only Russian and English. There are many tourists from Russia. The euro seems to be falling, Russian tourists are returning to the country again - so employees with Russian are required.

There are three main types of employment contracts in Italy:

• A chiamata - they call, they say that there is an opportunity to work for a couple of hours - and you come.
• Tempo determinato - is the end date of the work contract. Such an agreement allows you to open a bank account, go to the doctor's appointments for free, and make documents (di lavoro). Getting it is not so easy. Italy has its own quotas for hiring foreigners. They need to be monitored and submitted on time. My lawyer took care of this issue for me.
• Contratto indeterminato - a contract without an expiration date. It can be fired, but the employer must at least compensate for the payments due in such cases under the Italian labor code. And this costs a pretty penny for the company. So it’s easier for companies to either keep an employee on staff or force them to quit. Also, the employer gives sick leave, pays maternity leave. But the decree lasts only 6 months.

Pay in Italy is hourly. In Florence, for an hour of work, you can get at least about 6.5 euros net. For going out on holidays, of course, the payment is higher. There are bonuses: 13th and 14th salary. The 14th is half the earnings. So in general, income depends on the amount of time worked. The less you work, the less you get.

“Nothing works on weekends, supermarkets close at 9 pm. Did not have time? All. There are no convenience stores. On holidays, many shops and pharmacies are closed. None of the Italians wants to recycle and will not. Photo italia-ru.com

If the work is part time [part-time] - you can get 400-600 euros per month. If it's a full day, the average is 1000-1200 euros net. If you work in some large company, then salaries can start from 2000 euros.

The working day starts at different times. It all depends on the company: it can start at 8, and at 9, and at 10 o'clock. I work in a jewelry store. We have coffee breaks for 15 minutes in the morning and evening, plus 30 minutes for lunch. Other companies may be different. For example, kiosks selling vegetables and meat are open from 8 am to 11-12 am, then they close and open at 5 pm. That is, while others are at work, they are closed. The same with pharmacies.

Nothing works on weekends, supermarkets close at 9 pm. Did not have time? All. There are no convenience stores. On holidays, many shops and pharmacies are closed. None of the Italians wants to recycle and will not. On the one hand, this is good. On the other hand, why then complain about the crisis?

Medicine

If the annual income is less than 60 thousand euros, medicine is free for such a resident of the country. If the doctor prescribes drugs, they will be free or at a big discount.

If my primary care physician sends me to another specialist and he already prescribes medicines for me, then I will have a discount on the purchase of drugs. Let's say if the pills cost about 15-20 euros, thanks to the discount, I will only pay 4 euros for them. But if I went to my doctor and he prescribed the medicines, the pills would be free.

But you still need to make an appointment. And wait. In Russia, usually a doctor always sees in one clinic. In Italy, in one place, the doctor can take three times a week before lunch, and in another - three times a week in the afternoon.

For example, now I have an appointment for an ultrasound. I was given a referral in November or December. I go to the pharmacy to make an appointment. And they tell me that there is a free recording only for the summer, come back later, maybe something will be free. I came in two weeks - and a place was vacated for February. But I will not be conducting the study in the same place where my doctor sits, but in another place. Of course, you can go to a paid clinic. But either you go for an ultrasound of the kidneys for 0 euros, or for 90.

You can make an appointment both in pharmacies and in special terminals. To register, you need a special card - Tessera sanitaria. This is health insurance. To get it, you need to go to ASL (Azienda Sanitaria Locale - local sanitary service): fill out the paperwork, choose a doctor. After registration, it is sent to the house.

“If the annual income is less than 60 thousand euros, medicine is free for such a resident of the country. If a doctor prescribes drugs, they will be free or at a big discount.” Photo doctorleskov.blogspot.ru

This card allows you to buy cigarettes at night at an electronic tobacco kiosk. The country has an anti-tobacco law, according to which tobacco and cigarettes are sold in special kiosks. By the way, they are expensive. One pack costs 5-6 euros. But I don't smoke, so it doesn't matter to me.

Tessera sanitaria is not given to students for free. I applied for it when I already received a work visa. Of course, it can be done with a student visa, but you will have to pay about 200 euros. It seems to me that you simply “do not get sick” with this money: in three years I only went to the doctor twice. The insurance that we arrange inside the university covers the ambulance.

If you need to see a doctor, you need to go to Misericordia, and if you need emergency help, then to Guardia medica (patients are also brought here by the local ambulance). Since I have Tessera sanitaria, the service there and there is free for me.

There are also paid medical centers. Students and tourists usually go there. There, a doctor's appointment will cost 50 euros, and if you go to the "ambulance" - you will pay only 20 euros. The difference is significant, but few people know about it.

Transport

In Florence, you practically do not spend money on transport: everything is nearby. So it's enough to have a bike.

Public transport is well developed, but it works until 23:00. After 24:00 you can’t go anywhere. Tickets for public transport must be bought at the tabaccheria. Tabaccheria is the place where you buy cigarettes, magazines, souvenirs. They resemble the Russian stalls of Rospechat.

You can buy a ticket for one trip (1.2 euros), a travel card for 10 trips (10 euros), 20 trips or for the whole month (30 euros). Tickets can also be bought on the bus. But, firstly, it will cost 2 euros, and secondly, tickets may simply not be available.

If you buy a travel card for 20 trips, in fact it can be used 21 times. There is a 30-ride pass that allows you to make an additional 5 trips for free. The savings are big, the card is valid for a year from the moment of activation. If you travel often, you can buy a monthly pass.

Of course, you can take a chance and try to drive "hare". But sometimes inspectors come out on the route. If the violator is caught, you will have to pay a fine of about 50 euros.

Buses run every 5-10 minutes in the morning, and in the late afternoon - with a difference of 15-20 minutes. Unlike Rome and Milan, we do not have a metro, but the city authorities are developing a tram network.

“Unlike Rome and Milan, we do not have a metro, but the city authorities are developing a tram network.” Photo transphoto.ru

Cars are usually bought by those who live outside the city, or who travel far to work. Owning a car is expensive. Parking is paid. For a day, probably, you will give 20 euros. Hourly payment will cost 2.5 euros / hour. Plus, they still need to be found.

Recently, a man parked with me. There was a place, but he didn’t have enough space, so he pushed other cars with the “backward” of the car and attached himself. And there it is, in principle, normal. So then you will have to pay for repairs. In addition, Italy has a high tax on transport.

And taxis in Florence are expensive. There is only one taxi service for the whole city. If it rains, thunder - you won't be able to get through to them.

Leisure

In Florence, apart from going out to eat, there is nothing else to do. Movie? There is only one English speaking cinema. He shows one movie three days in a row three times a day. Italian films have premieres so often that they can be quickly found on the Internet. Bowling all sorts - only outside the city. There are many exhibitions, but the expositions are updated every 3-4 months. In fact, the only entertainment is to travel to other cities.

You can go to the gym. I have now found one similar to our "Planet Fitness" (including a swimming pool). I paid 840 euros per year for membership. And if I went to a small center without a pool, I would give about 400 for six months.

Native Italians prefer to run their own businesses, such as opening restaurants. But there are not enough offers from the service sector. For example, finding a good manicurist or pedicurist is a big problem (girls will understand me). There is no hardware manicure here. Everything is done by hand, and mostly poor quality. It is very difficult to find a specialist whose hands are “from the right place”.

If you are going to get a haircut, it is better not to say that you need to wash your hair. For that alone they will charge 20 euros. Another about 100 euros will cost a haircut with coloring. Just a haircut - about 50-60 euros. When I come to Tatarstan, I first run to all the doctors, take tests (in Russia it's faster) and go to beauty salons.

"In Florence, apart from going out to eat, there is nothing else to do." Photo travel.tochka.net

Italians

The men here are very fond of flirting, it's in their blood. He courts, says compliments - and it begins to seem that the man has fallen in love, but in fact he is just playing with the girl. Here men love Russian girls. We are much more feminine than Italians.

In Italy, you always need to have a sober head and not rush to fall in love. If a man seeks a woman, perhaps his interest is real. In general, they flirt a lot. All they say is noodles that stay on their ears. Of course, there are exceptions. I found love, and I'm not alone.

Italians are not used to saving. They will not save the last money. They will go buy a cocktail or a glass of red wine. Or better borrow-re-borrow - and do not return the debt.

But because of the ease with which the Italians relate to problems and work, there is a feeling that you do not just exist, but live!

Internet newspaper Realnoe Vremya

The book by Doctor of Philosophy and author of monographs on the history of Russian social thought Alexei Kara-Murza contains materials about the stay in Florence and impressions of the "city of flowers" of famous Russian writers, artists, public figures of the 15th-20th centuries. Perhaps it is in the memoirs and diaries of Fyodor Dostoevsky, Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Nikolai Berdyaev, Mikhail Kuzmin, Alexander Blok, who are in love with Florence, that the key to the attraction of Russian souls to this land of great creators, bluish-purple mountains and fragrant violets lies. A series of brilliant essays turns into a literary and philosophical investigation of the phenomenon of "divine" Florence.

* * *

The following excerpt from the book Famous Russians about Florence (A. A. Kara-Murza, 2016) provided by our book partner - the company LitRes.

Part one. Famous Russians in Florence

Abraham of Suzdal

Orthodox clergyman, Church historian and memoirist Avraamy, Russian participant in the Ferrara-Florence Cathedral of 1438-1439, author of the treatise "The Journey of Abraham Suzhdalsky to the Eighth Council with Metropolitan Isidore", occupied the episcopal chair in Suzdal from 1431 to 1437, and then, after returning from Italy, from 1441 to 1452

In the first half of the XV century. the Christian East of Europe fell victim to the new expansion of the Ottoman Turks. In 1422, Sultan Murad II laid siege to Constantinople (this time unsuccessfully); then conquered Wallachia and part of Serbia, seized some possessions of the Venetian Republic in northern Greece. In the face of new threats, Emperor John VIII Palaiologos of Byzantium and Patriarch Joseph II of Constantinople tried to enlist the support of the Christian sovereigns of the West, as well as the Papal Throne in the person of the Roman Pontiff Eugene IV (1383-1447), a Venetian by birth, who saw in the political weakening of Greek Orthodoxy an opportunity to establish the supremacy Latin faith.

The council, designed to unite the Western and Eastern churches, was convened in 1438 by Pope Eugene IV in Northern Italy, originally in Ferrara, a rich and famous center of science and culture in Europe, under the rule of the pope's ally, Niccolò III of the genus d'Este. The Council was supported by the emperor of Byzantium; it was attended by the Patriarch of Constantinople, plenipotentiaries of the Patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem, metropolitans and bishops from many lands and cities of Europe and Asia Minor, influential theologians - about 700 people in total.

In those years Grand Duke Vasily II of Moscow, politically dependent on the still strong Golden Horde, confessionally oriented towards Byzantium: the Metropolitan of Kiev and All Rus' was established in Constantinople. So in 1437, instead of the Bishop of Ryazan Jonah, who had been appointed by the Moscow prince, Patriarch Joseph II approved the Greek Isidore, an authoritative theologian and philosopher, an active fighter against Islam and a supporter of union with the papacy, to the increasingly important Moscow metropolis.

According to the historian of the Russian Church A.V. Kartashev, the representative composition of the Russian delegation to the cathedral in Ferrara (more than 10 people) testified that Isidore managed to convince the Grand Duke that the unification of the churches, thanks to which the Greek empire would be saved, was possible without sacrificing the Orthodox creed. Trusting the learned Greek, Vasily II sent him to Italy with a large retinue and a rich convoy of two hundred horses. Rumors spread throughout Rus' that the metropolitan was going to the good deed of converting the Latins to the right faith, and many Russian cities donated large sums of money for the trip. Especially generous were the northwestern lands, accustomed to close trade ties with Europe and expecting new benefits from church reconciliation.

Metropolitan Isidore and his retinue left Moscow on September 8, 1437, passed Novgorod, Pskov, Yuryev and Riga, from where he sailed by sea to Lubeck. From there, the Russian delegation, in which one of the main roles was played by the Bishop of Suzdal Abraham, moved south and through Nuremberg, Augsburg, the Alpine lands arrived in Ferrara on August 18, 1438.

Meanwhile, the Christian sovereigns of the West ignored the Council of Ferrara for the most part, supporting the opposition to Eugene IV within the Catholic hierarchy. In the Holy Roman Empire, in France, Castile, Aragon, Portugal, Scotland, Poland, in the Scandinavian kingdoms, the Council in Basel, which met in parallel, soon declared Eugene IV deposed, was considered legal.

Nevertheless, after a long wait for new representatives, the cathedral meetings in Ferrara were opened: they were attended mainly by Italian bishops, as well as representative delegations from the Orthodox East, seeking protection from the Catholics from the advancing Islam. At the same time, the Eastern hierarchs and theologians tried for a long time to defend their dogmatic positions, not wanting to make concessions to the Latins. Disappointed, Eugene IV ordered the promised maintenance of the delegates of the Eastern Churches to be cut, and then completely stopped it.

In January 1439 the cathedral was moved to Florence. Officially - because of the danger of a plague epidemic; in fact, due to suspicions that many participants may leave the cathedral and return to the East through a close border. Inclined to compromise with the Latins, the Byzantine emperor John VIII, at an internal meeting of the Greek delegation, argued the move to Florence by the lack of funds from the pope and the willingness of the Florentines to provide them.

Florence in the 15th century

Florence, formally a republic in those years, was under the rule of the Medici clan, whose leader, the richest merchant and banker in Europe, Cosimo Medici "The Elder" (1389-1464), held the high post of "Gonfaloniere of Justice" and actually single-handedly ruled the city. With the help of money from the Medici and some other wealthy Florentine families, Pope Eugene IV reopened the content to the Orthodox delegates, adjusting it according to their behavior. According to A.B. Kartashev, “the unfortunate Greeks hesitated. The most pliable of them were specially invited to the pope and returned from there as champions of union. The retreat began with the Russian Metropolitan Isidore and Bessarion of Nicaea. They persuaded the king (i.e. Emperor John VIII - A. K.) and the dying Patriarch Joseph. Then, through various oppressions and pressures, all the other Greek hierarchs were forced into union, except for Mark of Ephesus.

Fra Beato Angelico. Annunciation. 15th century

The course of the Ferrara-Florence Cathedral and the behavior of the Moscow delegation at it are described in the texts of Bishop Avraamy of Suzdal (the only Russian bishop at the Council) and two people from his entourage - Hieromonk Simeon and an anonymous "Suzdalian" (apparently, a lay clerk), whose pen belongs to "Walking to Florence" and the note "On Rome". In addition to the stories about canonical debates and negotiations, which, as is known, ended with the conclusion of the “Union of Florence” on July 5, 1439, the descriptions by the Russian participants of the grandiose mystery performances timed to coincide with two Christian holidays - the Annunciation (March 25) and the Ascension (coming in 1439 on May 15).

Judging by the text of the memoirs, Abraham of Suzdal was not just a “spectator” of these performances, but was previously initiated by the organizers (in agreement, of course, with the head of the “Russian delegation” Isidor) into the most complex technology of these spectacles unique for that time.

The mystery of the Annunciation based on the play by Feo Belcari "Rappresentationi della Anmmziazione di Nostra Donna" was shown on March 25 in the church of the Florentine monastery of St. Mark. Back in 1427, Cosimo Medici commissioned the architect Michelozzo di Bartolomeo to expand and rebuild the old dilapidated monastery, and in 1436, after returning from exile, he handed it over to the Dominican Order. All painting work in San Marco was directed by the Dominican monk "Fra" Beato Angelico, who created the famous altarpiece and frescoed more than 40 cells, corridors and other rooms of the monastery. Here in these fantastically beautiful interiors (in the spring of 1439 the work had not yet been completed) were the delegates of the Florence Cathedral, who became spectators of the mystery of the Annunciation.

In his "Journey to the Eighth Council", Abraham of Suzdal described the most complex "machinery" of the performance: “In the city of Florence, a certain man, an Italian by birth, arranged for many people a surprisingly cunning and wonderful likeness of the descent from heaven of the archangel Gabriel to Nazareth to the virgin Mary with the gospel of the conception of the only begotten son of God.” There is a well-founded version that the “certain Italian”, who invented and implemented the most complex mechanics of the Florentine performances on March 25 and May 15, was none other than the beloved architect and engineer of the Medici clan, Filippo Brunelleschi.

“Here is a semblance of heavenly circles, from which the Archangel Gabriel was sent from the Father to the virgin. In this place a throne is set up above, and on the throne a man of rank sits, dressed in a robe and a crown. Everything looks like a father. In his left hand he holds the Gospel. Around it and at its foot, many small children are kept by a cunning device, following the example of the heavenly powers. On the bedding place on the left side, a bed with a master's bed and a blanket was arranged. On this important and wonderful place, the prudent lad sits, dressed in expensive and wonderful maiden clothes and a crown. He holds books in his hands and reads quietly, and in all likeness resembles the Most Pure Virgin Mary ... From the previously named high place, five thin and strong ropes pass through the stone platform to the very altar. Two ropes pass close to the honest maiden. Along them, an angel descends to her with the third thinnest rope from above from her father with an annunciation. At the appointed time, this great and wonderful performance, many people want to see it. And the great church will be filled with a multitude of people, and after a little hesitation, people will be silent, looking up at the built church platform. And soon all the curtains and cloth will open on that platform, and all people will see the very one dressed up in likeness, in other words, the most pure Virgin Mary, sitting on a place miraculously arranged on the bed. This is a beautiful and wonderful sight! And soon the curtains at the top of the arranged place will open and the cannon roar will rumble in the likeness of heavenly thunder. In the same place above, the honest father will become visible, and around him more than five hundred burning candles. And these candles with fire constantly move back and forth, descend quickly, meet, others move upwards, while others go down towards them. Also, small children around their father in white robes, to say, heavenly powers, sing, and some beat the cymbal, while others play harps and squeaks. All this is a great spectacle, wonderful and joyful, and indescribable in words. After some time, an angel appears from the very top from the father, he descends from the father with two already named ropes down to the virgin with the gospel of the conception of the son of God. Its convergence from top to bottom occurs as follows: on the ports in the middle of the back, two small wheels are arranged and are not visible at all at a height. And these wheels are held by two ropes, and along these wheels, with a third thinnest rope, people lower them from above and lift them up, all this is arranged invisible.

During the ascent of the angel from above, from the father, with great noise and continuous thunder, fire went on the previously mentioned ropes and on the middle of the platform. And back up this fire returned and quickly came down from the top. And from this turning of the fire and from the blows the whole church was filled with sparks. The angel rose to the very top, rejoicing and waving his arms back and forth and moving his wings. Simply and clearly you can see how it flies. The fire begins to emanate abundantly from the upper place and pours throughout the church with a great and terrible thunder. And unlit candles in the church are lit from this great fire. And there is no harm to the spectators and their ports. This wonderful spectacle and cunning device was seen in the city of Florence, and as far as he could understand with his stupidity, he described this spectacle. There is no other way to describe it, because it is wonderful and inexpressible. Amen".

On May 15, 1439, on the fortieth day after Catholic Easter, a new grandiose performance took place - the mystery "Ascension" based on the play by the same Feo Belcari "Rappresentatione dell" Ascenzione ". This time, Eugene IV and Cosimo the Elder chose the Church of Santa Maria del Carmine on the left bank of the Arno. The temple belonged to the rich order of the Carmelites, originating from Jerusalem and founded, according to tradition, by the apostle Peter himself, the Roman pontiff, whose successors, according to the teaching of the Catholic Church, are the popes.

The Church of Santa Maria del Carmine became famous for the family chapel of the aristocratic Florentine Brancacci family (traditional enemies of the Medici clan), which outstanding artists Masolino and Masaccio were painted in the 1420s. frescoes on the life of the Apostle Peter. In 1436, after the return of Cosimo the Elder from exile, members of the Brancacci family were arrested. Thus, the use of the Church of Santa Maria del Carmine by the initiators of the Florence Cathedral - Eugene IV and Cosimo Medici - is more than understandable: the history and decoration of the church, glorifying the feat of the Apostle Peter, were intended to emphasize the power of the Pope and the new owner of Florence.

Here is what Abraham of Suzdal writes about the mystery of the Ascension, which took place in the interiors of the church of Santa Maria del Carmine on May 15, 1429:

Church of Santa Maria del Carmine.

Frescoes by Masolino and Masaccio (XV century) on the themes of the life of St. Peter the Apostle in the Brancacci Chapel of Santa Maria del Carmine.

“In the same famous city of Florence in the Church of the Ascension on Thursday of the sixth week after Easter, on this very holiday, the Latins create a remembrance in the likeness of antiquity, when Jesus Christ on the fortieth day ascended with glory to his father in heaven. In the middle of this church there is a platform, on the left side of the platform there is a small stone city, very wonderful, with towers and walls in the name of the holy city of Jerusalem. Opposite this city, at the first wall, there is a hill one and a half fathoms high, around it shops are built two spans high, and a mountain covered with beautiful hangings. And above this high Mount of Olives itself, a plank platform was built, decorated in every possible way, upholstered with boards on all sides and painted inside very marvelously. In the middle of this platform is a large, round hole, covered with a blue cloth. The sun and the moon are written on the canvas, and around their stars many are written. All this was done like the first circle of heaven, at the top it opens on two sides, in other words, the heavenly gates open, and then all people will see above the gates of heaven a man dressed in a robe and a crown, in all the likeness of God the Father, and a cunning device over the very he is held by the gates of heaven. In the direction of the Mount of Olives down, he looks at his son, and at the most pure, and at the apostles and sends blessing to them with his hand. And it is by no means clear how and with what he is holding, just how he sits in the air. And from above through the sky and the aforementioned Mount of Olives, seven strong ropes pass, with cunning and bewildered iron swivels. Below him is a boy, representing Christ, who wants to ascend to heaven to his father ... At the ninth hour of the day, many people come to the church for this glorious and cunning spectacle. And how the church will be filled with people, and, after a little silence, everyone looks at the middle of the church platform, up the arranged place. And then a man will appear in this place, dressed like a son of God, will go to the previously named city, that is, to Jerusalem. The Most Pure Mother of God follows him from there, and Mary Magdalene walks behind her. These images are represented by two youths dressed like women. Then the son of God from Jerusalem will lead the Apostle Peter and after him all his disciples, and will go with his mother and the apostles to the Mount of Olives. Peter, approaching, will fall at the feet of Jesus, and, having bowed, he will receive a blessing and stand in his place, and then all the disciples will do the same and stand on the right and left hand, one after the other, in their places. Immediately a great thunder will appear from above over this mountain, and they will see the sky opened and the father holding on to it with a cunning device. And with many candles, say, a great shining light, it is illuminated, and small children, say, heavenly forces around him, constantly move back and forth quickly with a great solemn roar, and beautiful singing, and terrible voices. And he will come from above from his father, say, from the gates of heaven, along the seven ropes mentioned, like a cloud, very cunning and incomprehensible, and filled with many beauties and cunning. As the cloud goes from the top to half the bottom, then, say, the son of God will take two great gilded keys and say to Peter: “You, Peter, build my church on this stone, and the gates of hell are not separated from it. And now I give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, you will bind him on earth, and he will be bound in heaven, and if you loose him on earth, he will be loosed in heaven.” And having blessed these keys and given them into his hands, he will begin to rise upwards with the previously named seven ropes, to a standing cloud, sending blessings to his mother and the apostles. And marvelous and inaccessible to the story is a visible spectacle. Soon the curtains will be opened to the audience from the arranged place, to say, from the upper heaven, and there will be a great light from a multitude of glass lamps burning with oil. And it is clear that the father sits on the throne, his son sits in his knees, to say, in the bowels of his father, with robes and a crown in everything, as befits a god-father. I wrote as much as I could, but I cannot leave such a cunning spectacle in oblivion. Amen".

On July 5, 1439 (the second indiction of 6947), under pressure from the Emperor and the Patriarch of Constantinople, most of the representatives of the Byzantine delegation signed the oros of the Council (the “Union of Florence”). Among those who did not sign were: Metropolitan Mark of Ephesus (with the support of the emperor's brother, who was against the union), Metropolitan Gregory of Iberia from Georgia (feigned madness), Metropolitan Isaac of Nitria, Metropolitan Sophronius of Gaza, and Bishop Isaiah of Stavropol (secretly fled from Florence and later received protection emperor's brother). To all appearances, Metropolitan Isidore of Moscow played a special role in the signing of the union; In any case, the Russian “Sermon on the Compilation of the Eighth Council” placed all the blame for signing the union on Isidore, addressing him with reproaches: "Ecu deceived the king, ecu confused the patriarch, and the reigning city of perdition filled ecu."

Before setting off on his return journey, Isidore received from Eugene IV the rank of cardinal presbyter and the title of papal legate in Lithuania, Livonia, all Rus' and Poland. At the end of 1439 he went to Rus' through Venice; then by sea to the Croatian coast; from here via Zagreb, Budapest and Krakow to Lithuania. From Vilna, Isidor went to Kyiv, where the Kiev prince Alexander Vladimirovich gave "his father Sidor" a special letter, which confirmed all the rights of the metropolitan in the "Kyiv region".

Isidore, Metropolitan of Kiev and All Rus'.

Only in the spring of 1441 Isidore arrived in Moscow, where the Grand Duke Vasily II, the Moscow government and the clergy had already worked out their position in relation to what had happened in Florence. The fact is that the close boyar of the Grand Duke of Moscow named Thomas (who also visited Ferrara and Florence) and hieromonk Simeon (who was part of the Suzdal delegation) openly quarreled with Metropolitan Isidore back in Venice and hurried to Moscow earlier than others to notify the Grand Duke about the circumstances of the conclusion union. Following them, on September 19, 1440, other Russian companions of the Metropolitan, led by Bishop Abraham, returned to Moscow. According to historians, “Moscow, by the time Isidore arrived, could already be filled with determination to defend Orthodoxy and reject the traitor metropolitan. Of course, the fact that, in rebelling against Isidore, they had to reject the authority of the Patriarchal authority of Constantinople that empowered him, and thereby recognize it as heretical, put the Grand Duke and the Russian bishops in an unusual difficulty.

Metropolitan Isidore arrived in Moscow on March 19, 1441, and proceeded straight to the Assumption Cathedral for divine service. At the liturgy, he ordered that in the first place not the name of the Patriarch of Constantinople, but the name of Pope Eugene IV be mentioned. After the liturgy, the metropolitan ordered his protodeacon to read aloud from the pulpit the Council act of July 5, 1439 on the union. Then he conveyed to the Grand Duke a message from the pope, in which Vasily II was invited to be a diligent assistant to the metropolitan in the matter of introducing the union. The speed and pressure with which Isidore acted so embarrassed the prince, boyars and bishops that they were at a loss at first: "All princes, says the chronicler, silent and boyars and others many, even more so, the Russian bishops ecu kept silent, and slumbered, iusnusha ... "

Grand Duke Vasily II rejects the Union of Florence.

Only three days later, having gathered his courage, Vasily II declared Isidore a heretic and ordered him to be arrested and imprisoned in the Miracle Monastery. The Council of the Russian Clergy, which took place soon, denounced Isidore’s heresy, exhorted him to repent, however, due to Isidore’s inflexibility, he was kept in custody for several months, and then “allowed to escape”: Isidore fled through Tver to the Lithuanian Grand Duke Casimir, and from there to Rome. The fate of Bishop Abraham of Suzdal, who first signed the Union of Florence and then renounced it, turned out well. His faithful man in the Russian delegation at the Council in Italy, hieromonk Simeon of Suzdalets, officially showed that Abraham did not want to sign the union, but the apostate Isidore imprisoned him “Into the dungeon and cede a full week; and to that I signed not with my will, but with need.” In 1448, Bishop Abraham participated in the Council in Moscow, which finally overthrew Isidore and installed the Bishop of Ryazan, Jonah, Metropolitan of Kyiv and All Rus'.

Vasily Bogdanovich Likhachev

The biography of Vasily Bogdanovich Likhachev, the ambassador of the Russian Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich to the Grand Duke of Tuscany Ferdinando II, is replete with lacunae, not uncommon for Russian history of the 17th century. It is known that he began his career surrounded by Patriarch Filaret (Romanov), the father of Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich: in the late 1620s. is listed as "patriarchal stolnik". Under Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, as a "Moscow nobleman", Likhachev was in the sovereign's service; in the 1640s was a governor in Tsivilsk - an important military stronghold of the Muscovite kingdom in the Chuvash lands. Later, he was again noted in Moscow - surrounded by Patriarch Joseph; repeatedly accompanied Alexei Mikhailovich and Tsarina Marya Ilyinichna (nee Miloslavskaya) on out-of-town trips and "praying trips" to the Trinity-Sergeevsky and Savvino-Storozhevsky monasteries.

The new rise of Vasily Likhachev took place during the years of the patriarchate of Nikon, who had great influence on the tsar, including in matters of foreign policy. During the military conflict with the Commonwealth for control over Western Russian lands, and then in the outbreak of war with the Swedes, Likhachev was in the tsar's inner circle: in July 1656, he participated in diplomatic negotiations in Polotsk with the ambassadors of the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand III, and in August of the same year, near Kokenhausen (Kukeinos) - with the envoys of the Danish king Frederick III.

In 1659, Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich conceived a new embassy to the "Italian lands"; this time (after the unsuccessful embassy of Ivan Chemodanov and Alexei Posnikov to the Doge of Venice in 1656-1657) - to Florence, to the Grand Duke of Tuscany Ferdinand II of the Medici house. Vasily Likhachev was appointed head of the embassy - on this occasion he was given the title of "viceroy of Borovsky".

The "Article List" of the embassy of 1659-1660, which was later published in "Monuments of Diplomatic Relations of Ancient Russia with Foreign Powers", has been preserved. The purpose of the embassy was to raise the international prestige of Muscovy in the course of the confrontation with Poland and Sweden, as well as to establish privileged trade relations with Tuscany: the Moscow tsar ordered to ask the Grand Duke for the sale of “patterned goods” for the royal household to Moscow merchants without duty and, in general, for permission to "free" (ie, duty-free) trade. In exchange, Alexei Mikhailovich allowed the subjects of the Grand Duke to trade duty-free in the Russian lands and keep the fish and caviar trades in Arkhangelsk on their own.

Reception of the Moscow Embassy of Vasily Likhachev by the Grand Duke of Tuscany Ferdinand II.

An experienced clerk Ivan Fedorovich Fomin (who later rose to the rank of tsar’s steward) was sent as an envoy to Florence under the head of the mission, Likhachev, along with clerks Stepan Polkov and Pankrat Kulakov, who were in charge of office work. From the Ambassadorial order, two interpreters-translators were assigned to the delegation: the Italian language - Timofey Toporovsky (it is known that he had already been to Italy and received an annual salary of 36 rubles) and the German language - Pletnikov.

According to custom, the Orthodox priest Ivan Alekseev was included in the delegation. A later commentator noted in this connection that in those years elderly boyars were appointed as ambassadors, who, going abroad for a long time, "they were afraid to die, among the impious, without a confessor and the rites prescribed by the Eastern Church." The tsar also ordered to take in Arkhangelsk a reliable “treasurer” (treasurer who swore an oath of honesty on the cross) to store the “sovereign sable treasury”, which the ambassadors brought as a gift to the Duke of Tuscany and his entourage.

On July 8, 1659, the delegation left Moscow for Arkhangelsk and arrived at the place only And August. For another month, the envoys lived in Arkhangelsk, waiting for the arrival and loading of two English ships sailing around Europe. On September 21, after listening to a prayer service in the Transfiguration Cathedral, Likhachev, Fomin and their comrades (24 people in total) set off, accompanied by a detachment of archers, to the sea harbor on Moseevomostrov, from where the voyage began. The English merchant ships were chosen, among other things, because England in those years was on good terms with the Ottoman Porte, and under the protection of the English flag, the Moscow ambassadors could not be afraid of the attack of the "Turkish thieves" who dominated the Mediterranean. The voyage began with misfortune: on the third day, the translator from Italian Timofey Toporovsky died (his absence would later have a strong impact in Italy), and the priest Alekseev had to perform a funeral service and burial at sea.

Rounding Europe and passing the Strait of Gibraltar, the ships with the Russian embassy entered the Mediterranean on November 9, 1659. Likhachev noted with surprise in the "Article List":

“On that sea, the days became bright and red, like ours on Trinity Day, and here about Filippov’s spell is as follows: and the days and nights are the same.”

However, severe storms began almost immediately - just like three years ago, when the embassy of Chemodanov and Posnikov was sent along the same route from Arkhangelsk to Livorno, then losing most of the commercial goods they had taken with them and severely damaging the expensive Siberian furs intended for the Venetians. This time, in order to facilitate the ships, it was necessary to dump some food supplies and barrels of fresh water into the sea - by the end of the journey, due to a lack of drinking water, rainwater had to be collected on deck. In the "Article List" of the embassy there are entries: “After a storm on the sea, the messengers rendered prayerful singing to Christ God…”

On January 5, 1660, already in sight of the harbor of Livorno, the main seaport of Tuscany (which had completely replaced Pisa by that time due to the shallowing of the Arno mouth), a severe storm damaged the ships so much that they could hardly drop anchors. The crew and passengers went through strict border control due to the threat of bringing in a "pestilence": the Tuscan guards "loosed" each (section) and carefully examined it.

On January 7, the governor of Livorno, Prince Tommaso Serristori, invited ambassadors to the city. “Dressing up in embassy dress” and sitting in covered, velvet-lined rowing galleys, the guests sailed to the city pier, greeted by gunfire. From the coast to the governor's palace, Likhachev and Fomin, with the closest people, rode in two rich six-wheeled carriages; guards with lit torches walked on both sides, and the rest of the delegation followed behind on foot.

For three days the ambassadors lived in the house of a wealthy Livorno merchant who had been trading with the Russians for a long time, and then Prince Serristori conveyed to them an invitation from the Grand Duke to come to Pisa, where Ferdinand II with his wife Vittoria (from a noble Urbino family della Rovere) and son-heir Cosimo stayed, it turns out , for a month, having received news of the imminent arrival of the "Muscovites" through messengers from Amsterdam.

Palazzo Pitti - residence of the Grand Dukes of Tuscany

In Pisa, Russian ambassadors presented Ferdinando II with a letter of tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, as well as "loving commemoration" (gifts). The description of the reception of envoys in the "Article List" raises some doubts: the absence of an interpreter, who died during the voyage, probably affected. So, according to Likhachev's "List", Duke Ferdinando in his speech allegedly constantly called himself "Servant of the Moscow Sovereign":

“Why did your Grand Duke, from the glorious city of Moscow, look for me with great mercy and a commemoration for me, his servant and worker? And he is the Great Sovereign, that the sky is separated from the earth, then he is the Great Sovereign: glorious and glorious from the end to the end of all the universes, and his name is glorious and terrible in all states, from the old Rome and to the new and to Jerusalem, and what is less to the poor to repay for his greatness and much mercy? Ayai, my brothers and my son of his Great Sovereign are slaves and serfs, and for the sake of serving and working for him the Great Sovereign forever as he pleases and wherever my will be ... "

In Florence (“the glorious city of Florensk”), the Russian embassy was placed in the chambers of the ducal Pitti Palace on the left bank of the Arno. Three things especially struck the guests - an unusual-looking globe, an inkwell and a richly cleaned latrine:

“Yes, a wheel was built, and an apple was written on the wheel, and all the states of the earth were written on the apple, and the night runs and the lunar current were written on the same apple ... The inkwell, from which they wrote, was gold, about thirty pounds, and instead of sand, silver ore, and waste covered with Florensky velvet, they vomit them all the days.

During the solemn reception given by the Grand Duke in honor of the Moscow envoys, Ferdinando II seated Likhachev next to him; clerk Fomin sat next to his son-heir, the future Grand Duke Cosimo III. The ducal treat impressed the guests:

“Three double-headed eagles are arranged on the table, the first eagle is made on sugar, in the middle of the onago our Great Sovereign is depicted on an argamak<коне>, holding a scepter in his hand ... and the dishes on the table were all made with masterful fiction; animals, birds and fish, and all with sugar ... " Many toasts were said for the sovereigns: “The envoys left the table, with great servility, drank courteously, and before drinking, the titles spoke full of the sovereign’s long-term health and about Tsaritsyno and about the Tsareviches and about the Tsarevnas; and the prince and brothers and son and all stood at that time: at the same time they played music and cymbals and organs and two trumpeters and eight horns.

Having received expensive Siberian furs as a gift from Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, the Grand Duke began to ask Likhachev about the "Siberian state" and examined him according to the "drawing", i.e. e. on a geographical map. The duke was struck by the size of Siberia and was very surprised that it was impossible to “catch” the sables, martens, foxes, squirrels and other animals living there; he even took a painting from Likhachev, "because which beast breeds in a year." Likhachev explained the interest of the Grand Duke in the "List" by the fact that “They don’t have any animal, because the places are very mountainous, and not forested, and the forest is all planted.”

In Florence, the wedding of the heir to the Tuscan throne, Cosimo de Medici, with the Frenchwoman Margarita-Louise, daughter of the Duke of Orleans, was then being prepared. Duchess Vittoria wished that two fur coats were made "according to Russian custom", which she could give to her daughter-in-law. Likhachev ordered to make two fur coats: one was ermine, covered with damask, the other squirrel, covered with taffeta: the duchess "took herself up and marveled at what they had done well."

Likhachev and his companions were struck by a planetarium in one of the ducal chambers (the same one organized by Galileo Galilei, patronized by the Medici): "celestial movement and circle, and in it the description of the whole world and the solar run." Then the guests visited the armory yard, surrounded by a moat, admired the pacers and argamaks in the stable yard, of which there were up to four hundred, and concluded with the ducal "menagerie":

“They (i.e., servants) showed 2 lions and 2 living bears, 2 strofocamila birds[African ostrich]; one bird laid an egg, there is no hour for that, but it pulls half a pound, the size of a hat: 27 people ate fried eggs from one egg.

One day, Russian envoys were taken to watch the traditional team ball game - giuoco del calcio - in Santa Croce Square:

“A high place is arranged for the messengers in the marketplace, covered with velvet; and on the other side against the messengers of the chambers with a hundred, three and four dwellings; here sat the prince and the princess, and the prince's son and brothers, and expensive carpets were hung from every window in the chambers. And the game was on: two tents were set up, and people in armor and armor and helmets: six dwarfs, six trumpeters, six drummers and colonels, and from the south a man of smart young men and light; but they played: they threw the ball, which country will cross: and at that time there were 4 shots throughout the city. And to the envoys and players from the princess gifts: taffeta fly[pennants], and the military formation is printed on them, and having gone to our place.

Ball game in Plaza Santa Croce. 17th century

Before the departure of the Russian ambassadors from Florence, the Grand Duke presented Likhachev and the deacon Fomin each with a weighty gold chain: one at 10, the other at 8 pounds. Other members of the delegation were not forgotten: each of them was given a gold chain, weighing 1 pound 20 spools.

On February 16, 1660, the envoys left Florence for Bologna, Piacenza, and Milan. Further, the path went to Switzerland: when crossing the Alpine pass of St. Gotthard, the letter of the Grand Duke certified with a gold seal to Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich was carried with particular care. When all the belongings, including the sovereign's treasury and gifts, were carried on carts pulled by oxen (“for the fact that horses with packs, like a great wind, are thrown into deep abysses”)"Prince of Florensky leaf" was carried by clerks.

Having sailed further along the Rhine, the travelers at the end of March 1660 were in Amsterdam, from where they returned by ship in June to Arkhangelsk. A month later, in the Kremlin chambers, Ambassador Vasily Likhachev solemnly presented Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich with a letter from the Grand Duke of Tuscany.

Boris Petrovich Sheremetev

Boris Petrovich Sheremetev (1652-1719) - military leader, diplomat, close associate of Peter I. Field Marshal General (1701); count (1706). A native of an ancient boyar family. He began his service under Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich: in 1765 he was granted a room steward. Under Tsar Fedor Alekseevich, he was even closer: “in the discussion of his predominantly beautiful appearance and external qualities of the body, he stood at audiences granted to ambassadors, in the attire of a rynda[squire] in front of the throne. At the age of 19, as governor and governor of Tambov, he commanded troops against the Krymchaks. In 1682, upon the accession to the throne of the tsars John and Peter, he was granted to the boyars. From the end of 1686, he led the army guarding the southern borders, participated in the Crimean campaigns. After the fall of the ruler Sophia, he joined Tsar Peter Alekseevich; participant of the Azov campaigns (1695-1696).

In 1697-1698, on the instructions of Peter, the 1.45-year-old Sheremetev made an important diplomatic trip to the states of Europe: the Kingdom of Poland, the Holy Roman Empire, the Venetian Republic, the Papal States, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, the Order of Malta, and on the way back - more and the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. Sheremetev's retinue included: Aleksey Kurbatov, a "butler" who sometimes represented Sheremetev on behalf and under the guise (later promoted as a major Russian administrator and financier); Iosif Peshkovsky, a clergyman who translated and compiled official papers; Gerasim Golovtsyn, close to Sheremetev on military campaigns; a few more nobles and servants. Later, based on the notes of Golovtsyn and Kurbatov, the clerk Pyotr Artemyev compiled the official materials of the trip, which became known as the “Note of the Travel of Count Sheremetev”.

The embassy left Moscow on July 22, 1697 with papers from Peter I to the Polish king, the Austrian emperor, the pope, the Doge of Venice and the Grand Master of the Order of Malta to create a coalition against the Turks. To achieve political goals, the envoy of the Russian Tsar repeatedly resorted to tricks and hoaxes. In Poland, where the pro-French party did not recognize the power of the Russian protege of King August II, Sheremetev, as follows from the papers, was forced to hide his name, called himself the Russian "captain Roman", changed clothes, had a common table with his retinue, while Kurbatov represented first person. In early February, Sheremetev secretly, dressed in someone else's dress, went ahead of the embassy to Venice to hold confidential negotiations, and at the same time, without formalities, take part in the carnival. Here, the younger brothers of Boris Petrovich, Vasily and Vladimir Sheremetev, who were in Venice on the instructions of Peter I, joined the Russian delegation.

On March 21, 1898, the Russian delegation - via Ferrara, Bologna, Faenza, Pesaro and Spoleto - arrived in Rome, where Pope Innocent XII gave the ambassador of the Moscow Tsar a rare honor: “He did not order to take away his swords and hats at the entrance to the audience hall, he himself accepted the letters he brought from his hands, praised his courageous deeds against the enemies of the Holy Cross and allowed him to his hand, and he kissed him on the head.” The next day, Sheremetev, in turn, “I sent a sable blanket worth nine hundred rubles, two precious brocades and five forty ermines to the Primate.” Before the departure of the Russians from Rome, Innokenty sent Sheremetev a golden cross containing a particle of the tree of the life-giving Cross of the Lord.

Sheremetev was solemnly received by the Knights of Malta in Valletta and had negotiations with the Grand Master Raymond Perellos-Rockafull, who awarded the Ambassador of the Russian Tsar with the Maltese Cross.

On May 22, the Russian delegation returned by sea to Naples, from where Sheremetev traveled to the Adriatic coast to Bari to worship the holy relics of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, and on June Sheremetev was again in Rome, saw the Pope (from whom he received letters of return to the Russian Tsar and the Austrian Emperor Leopold) and On June 15, he set out on his way back north in the direction of Venice and Vienna.

On June 22, 1698, "on the eighth day" of the journey from Rome, Sheremetev arrived in the capital of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, where the delegation stopped at one of the inns. That same night, a messenger arrived at Sheremetev from the Grand Duke, who had heard about the arrival of the eminent "Muscovite" in Florence: “And the same evening, having learned about the arrival of the boyars, the grand duke sent the abbot, father Francis, to the boyar at three in the morning.”

Boris Petrovich Sheremetev

In Sheremetev's "Notes" there is a florid appeal of abbot Francis to the ambassador of the Moscow sovereign:

“The Most Serene and Most Powerful Great Sovereign, His Tsarist Most Serene Majesty of Moscow and other many and glorious states of the autocrat and emperor, the close boyar and viceroy of Vyatka Boris Petrovich Sheremetev, and his great generalissimo troops, sent me to your most noble person, the Most Serene Grand Duke Florensky Cosmus III de Medicis , ordered you to ask about your health and through me, his lowest slave, sends you his worship. He rejoices a lot that Your Grace waited for his state, such a pleasant guest, he grieves about this, that, without making himself known, he favored our arrival without doing any honor due to your glorious and noble name; however, even then he argues that your noblest person did something of her own free will, and attributes it to your wise deeds. And he ordered me to serve your mercy and with my carriages with servants and runners, and, if you please, ride in them. Moreover, he asked his lordship to see his lordship the Grand Duke, where Your Grace himself pleases.

In those years, the Grand Duke of Tuscany was already elderly Cosimo III Medici (1642-1723) - a zealous Catholic, but an incapable politician, whose state was in decline. More than twenty years ago, he divorced Margarita-Louise of Orleans (as we recall, he was preparing to marry her during the time of Likhachev's embassy to his father), who rather preferred to go to a monastery than live with her disgusted spouse. When, a few years later, Cosimo asked the Frenchwoman to renew the marriage, she proudly replied: “Not an hour or a day passes that I don’t want someone to hang you ... We both will soon go to hell, and I still have to suffer the torment of meeting you there ...”

Grand Duke of Tuscany Cosimo III Medici

The next day, upon arrival, Sheremetev, with the brothers Vasily and Vladimir, in two carriages sent by the Grand Duke and accompanied by Abbot Francis and the "fast walkers" running in front of the carriages, went to inspect the city.

"Florence is a great city, bigger than Venice,- we read in Sheremetev's Notes. - The chambers in it are made in a special structure, and not in the same way as in the Roman and Venetian regions. Through the city of Florence flows a great river called Arno, through its four great bridges with different figures. Florensky Grand Duke is dedinal[hereditary] prince and autocratic, not like the prince of Venice. The chambers of Grand Duke Florensky are grand and lavishly decorated.

The travelers examined the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore and the Church of San Lorenzo under construction with the Medici family tomb:

“There is a great church here, everything is made, from the ground to the cross, from different marbles, but there is no simple stone anywhere ... Another church is being built, where the coffins of the Grand Dukes of Florensky stand, all from different precious marbles, which church has not been run over anywhere. And how they began to build this church, to build that sho years old, but only half built, and always unceasingly built, and great, they say, the treasury is spent on it. An obligatory item on the program of inspection of Florence by high-ranking guests was the ducal "menagerie" - the pride of several generations of the Medici:

“Then they were in the menagerie and saw large lions, and lionesses, and for six months young lions, also leopards, bears, wolves, foxes, white foxes, sea cats and great eagles.”

On the third day of the stay of Russian guests in the capital of Tuscany, a solemn reception was organized in the grand ducal palace:

“And as soon as they arrived at the chambers, many of his ministers met the boyar. And the Grand Duke himself met in another ward and kindly took root, took the boyar by the hand and led him to his right hand and said: “I am very happy to see such a pleasant guest in my house, whom, hearing containing his way in the Italian regions and beyond , more and more wholeheartedly - I wanted to see, which now I have not lost my desire. Against which, also in a decent way, the boyar thanked him ... "

Signoria Square. 18th century

Cosimo III showed Sheremetev an engraving depicting the Moscow Tsar Peter in German dress, stored in his office, saying: “Looking at this, his royal majesty, person, as at himself, I truly always honor him.” He showed the Grand Duke and the Moscow geographical maps of the Black Sea, saying that “His Royal Majesty deigned to compose this land map with his own hands.” Then Cosimo took Sheremetev to a special room where the Medici family jewels were kept: “And he led the boyar to another chamber, in which he showed a stone, a faceted diamond, the size of a forest apple, equal on all sides, also many different precious studs and a lot of peach pearls, other pearls the size of a Russian walnut, and in one stash he seemed hanging red gave [a stone like a ruby], the size of a large forest apple, and showed many other things ... "

After a visit to the palace, the guests were taken to see a particularly revered Florentine shrine - the incorruptible relics of Mary Magdalene de Pazzi, stored in the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli:

“The same day we went to the monastery of the Karmalitan lawyers. Here in the church lie the relics of the holy martyr Mary, laid under the throne and visible behind the incorruptible crystal ... "

The guests also looked at the treasures of the Uffizi Gallery, which combined the state office and a repository of rarities:

“Then they were in the state in eleven chambers, they showed a great treasure of gold, silver, expensive stones, various caskets with stones, various picturesque paintings, guns and saddles of different states, which is great wealth and purity is observed ...”

With special care, the documents of the Florence Cathedral of 1439 were kept in the Uffizi, at which the union between the Catholic and Orthodox churches was concluded: “They showed the description of the cathedral that was in Florence on a great sheet, on which the Caesar of Greece and everyone who was at that cathedral signed their names with their own hands.” Sheremetev, apparently, was particularly interested in this document, and he asked to make a copy for him, which was made and handed to him before leaving.

On the eve of Sheremetev's departure from Florence, the same abbot Francis, on behalf of Cosimo III, presented him with a precious "box" as a gift: “This box is carved, framed with silver, and in it are two boxes with many medicines.” Sheremetev, in turn, also gave gifts to the hospitable hosts: “And the boyar of this sent one gave: two pairs of sables and a jamb of damask - at a cost of fifty rubles; and princes' drivers, and lackeys, and runners were given twenty chervonets.

On June 15, 1698, the Russian delegation left Florence for Venice, where by that time many Russians had gathered in anticipation of Tsar Peter Alekseevich, who was traveling around Europe as part of the “Great Embassy”.

Apparently, on the instructions of Peter Sheremetev, he stayed in Venice until August 10, then he negotiated for almost a month in Vienna, where Emperor Leopold I “I listened with curiosity to the story of Boris Petrovich, especially about Italy and Malta; wished that the badge he received would encourage him to new exploits, useful for all of Christianity.

Having then visited the Polish lands and Kyiv, Sheremetev returned to Moscow only on February 10, 1899, having appeared before Tsar Peter "in a German dress, with a Maltese commander's cross and a precious sword." After that, the tsar ordered to write in all official papers relating to Sheremetev that “His title, in addition to the boyar dignity, still received an increment, and as in the Boyar Book, in the Paintings and other papers, he himself would have been written: Boyar and Military certified Maltese Cavalier.”

Petr Andreevich Tolstoy

Pyotr Andreevich Tolstoy (1645 - 02/07/1729, Solovetsky Monastery) - statesman, diplomat, memoirist. A relative of the princes Miloslavsky, during the Moscow struggle for power in 1682, he recklessly joined the party of Princess Sophia, inciting archers against the Naryshkins, but soon went over to the side of the young Tsar Peter Alekseevich. In the second half of his life - one of the closest associates of Peter the Great.

In 1697-1699, in order to atone for the mistakes of the past and earn the trust of Peter I, the middle-aged Tolstoy, already a grandfather, traveled to Europe at his own expense to master the ship's skills especially valued by the tsar. He visited Poland, the Holy Roman Empire, Venice, Milan, the Papal States, Naples, the islands of Sicily and Malta, about which he left a detailed "Diary", known as "Travel of the Steward P. A. Tolstoy in Europe 1697-1699".

Petr Andreevich Tolstoy

In the summer of 1698, on his way back from Malta, Tolstoy stopped in Naples, then was in Rome, and then moved north to the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. Unlike Sheremetev's embassy, ​​who visited these places two months earlier, Tolstoy traveled alone, as a private person, and on the way to Florence on August 21, 1698, he stopped in Siena:

“That city of the Grand Duke Florensky is very large, stands on a high mountain. In that city there are tall stone buildings, made with a fair amount of craftsmanship. That city is crowded; and people in it live a fair policy, honest persons, ride in fair carriages and have fair ones; also the wives and maidens of that city ride in carriages. There are many merchants in that city, there are enough shops and goods in that city. Monasteries and churches in that city of a fair structure ... "

On the morning of August 23, Tolstoy reached Florence, not suspecting that the city was still full of rumors about the noble "Muscovites" who had recently visited here and received an honorary reception from the Grand Duke himself:

“I arrived at the Florensky Gates, and at the gates, in which the soldiers stand guard, they, as usual, wanted to examine all sorts of merchant's things in my chest. And when they heard about me that I was a man of the Moscow state, and they, without examining anything, immediately let me into Florence.

At the entrance to Florence, Tolstoy stopped at the inn (ostaria) of San Lunzi, where he was pleasantly surprised by the reception:

“In that ostaria, the owner took me a fair ward, in which there was a gilded bed with a fair curtain, also a good bed with white clean sheets and a fair blanket, and a table, and chairs, and fair chairs, and every kind of dressing, mirrors, pictures, like Italians usually clean the chambers. In that ostaria for food, and for the ward, and for any rest, I paid the owner for myself seven Pauls of Rome for a day, and Moscow money will be half a dozen ... "

The city produced a very good impression:

“Florence is a great place between great mountains out of the blue. And the Grand Duke, that is, the Grand Duke, who has a crown, that is, crowned, has under him also other considerable places, and his dominion is considerable and populous. Florence is a city of stone, of an ancient structure, with stone towers and gates of ancient fashion, but of considerable craftsmanship. The whole city of Florence is paved with stone, and there are high chambers, three or four dwellings high, but they are built simply, not according to architecture. A considerable river flows through Florence, which is called the Arno. Four stone bridges were made across that river, great ones, on stone pillars, between which one is very large, on which a silver line is built. There are more than 200 monasteries and churches in Florence, which have a fair amount of decoration and are rich in silver and all sorts of church utensils…” Tolstoy also liked the inhabitants of the city:

“The vile people in Florence are devout, political and zealously admirers and truthful ... In Florence, the people are pure and zealously welcoming to the forestiers[foreigners]. French dresses are worn by honest people, and other persons are like Roman dresses; and the merchants wear the same dress as the Venetian merchants, – black; and the female sex in Florence is cleaned in the Roman way. Honest people in Florence and rich merchants ride in carriages and carriages; and there are many carriage horses in Florence; also wives and girls ride in carriages, pretty cleaned up, on good horses ... "

View of Florence from the Arno River. 18th century

The Florentines seemed to the Russian traveler to be a hard-working and prosperous people:

“The rows in which merchants and artisans sit are many in Florence and there are enough of all kinds of goods; there are also many artisans of all kinds, and most of all, Florence boasts of skill that they make all sorts of things, great and small, from pink marbles very surprisingly ... 50 or more...

Tolstoy was also pleasantly surprised by the relative cheapness of local life:

“In Florence, bread, and meat, and all living creatures are inexpensive, and there is enough of that; also fish are plentiful and inexpensive; and all kinds of fruits are plentiful and very cheap, and moreover, there are a lot of fair grapes, from which fair wines are made, which are glorious Florensky wines all over the world; and there are a lot of them, white and red, which are immensely tasty and intoxicating; and they will buy them cheaply there, and when they buy them, they take them to distant places for the glory that there are glorious Florensky wines ... "

Meanwhile, the shortcomings of urban management did not hide from the eye of an experienced traveler:

“In Florence there are not in many places fountains that are spoiled, but good workmanship, just not the same as in Rome, and not all fountains in Florence have water flowing ... "

Like earlier Sheremetev and his companions, Tolstoy describes one of the main Florentine curiosities - the "menagerie" of the Grand Duke, located behind the Old Palace on Via dei Leoni:

“Then he came to a house in which animals and birds are sitting of the Grand Duke of Florence. In that house spacious places and chambers were made for the animals, in which the animals live fairly. Great windows were made in those places and iron bars, thick, were inserted into which windows through those bars people can see animals ... "

Tolstoy's enumeration of the inhabitants of the "menagerie" is much more detailed than that presented in Sheremetev's notes:

“In that house I saw a great lion, who, they say, is g years old. Then I saw a great lioness, and they say an amazing thing about her, as if she was ill with a fever, which I saw lying, and roared loudly, as if groaning. Then I saw a young lion, which does not yet have a mane and a hand on its tail; but they say that the lion is still three years old. Then he saw: two small lions in one place sit and play among themselves, and majesty the small lions from a mediocre wolf; but they say that those lions are still seven months old and brought from Gishpania. In the same house I saw one great leopard and very handsome. In the same house I saw three great bears, between which one sexual, great; but they say that that sexual bear has been sitting in that house for three years. In the same house I saw many great wolves. In the same house I saw one black fox; but they say that that fox was brought to Florence from Moscow long ago. I saw a lot of great gray eagles there.”

Important details can be found in Tolstoy's memoirs:

“In the midst of that house, a spacious place was made between the chambers; in the midst of that place stands a pillar of a wooden great. And that place was made for this: when the Grand Duke of Florenskaya wants to have fun with those animals, then animals are released into that place; and those animals are fighting in that place, and the Grand Duke is looking from above, where stone, fair transitions are made around that mentioned place.

Equally unique is Tolstoy's description of a special "machine" with which the servants of the menagerie could stop the deadly fights of enraged exotic animals:

“And if the beast of the beast learns to overcome and it is impossible for people to separate them because of their ferocity, and for this an instrument is made like this: one great imagination is made of clay, immensely scary, like a terrifying toad; and people will enter that image and kindle a fire in it, so that smoke and flames of fire will come from that image from the mouth, and from the eyes, and from the ears, and from the sides. And so those people in that monster will drive up to the place where those animals are fighting, and when the animals see that image, they are frightened, they hope that something living has entered them, and they will scatter in different ways, leaving the fight. Then their fur-catchers, having taken them, will put them in their places where they live. And that scary image was made on wheels, and former people can go wherever they want in it ... "

Walking around the city and constantly suffering from the August heat, Tolstoy examined the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, the Baptistery of San Giovanni, the unfinished church of San Lorenzo with the Medici Chapel and some other sights on the right bank of the Arno. Having also looked at the Uffizi, he, through the Ponte Vecchio, crossed to the left bank:

“Then I came to one great bridge, which was made across the river on stone pillars high green and wide. On that bridge, on both sides, shops were made, in which markants, that is, merchants, sit and trade in silver. In those silver shops there are a small number, and I have not seen the best works in silver in those shops.

Tolstoy looked at the Pitti Palace, mistakenly assuming that the Grand Duke was there at the moment - in fact, during the summer heat, the Court moved closer to the sea, to Pisa. Tolstoy was not embarrassed even by the absence of serious guards in front of the palace:

“Then I came to Florensky’s court. That court of his stands on a hillock, great chambers, buildings and ancient fashions. At its gate there is one guard with a protazan, and I did not see anyone at his courtyard ... "

An interesting explanation for the difference high self-esteem Tolstoy, why he decided not to disturb the Grand Duke and not pay him a visit:

“And I didn’t go to his courtyard, because I went for a walk there in a secret person, but in my implicit person, because my intention was not to live in Florence for more than one day. And if they told me with their face in Florence, and the Grand Duke Florenskaya would have lovingly detained me: for the name of my sovereign, I would like to inflict honor on me[honor] and that would have created an obstacle to my path. And, looking at that Grand Duke at home, I came to my ostaria ... "

Tolstoy ordered a carriage for the early morning of the next day and, having paid in advance with the owner (“so that I don’t have any detention from anyone”), left the capital of Tuscany he liked; his path lay in Ferrara, Padua and further to Venice.

... Almost twenty years later, in neither Pyotr Andreevich Tolstoy again visited Italy, where, by means of ingenious combinations, he managed to persuade the heir Alexei Petrovich, who was hiding from the tsar-father, to return to Russia. Subsequently, Tolstoy personally led the investigation into the case of the Tsarevich.

For services to Emperor Peter I, P. A. Tolstoy received the title of count in 1724, thus becoming the founder of the count family of Tolstoy. After the death of the successor of Peter the Great, Empress Catherine, Tolstoy lost court intrigues to Menshikov, was exiled to the Solovetsky Monastery, where he died.

Demidovs

On the left bank of the Arno, next to the embankment at Ponte alle Grazie, there is Piazza Nicola Demidoff, named after Nikolai Nikitich Demidov (1773-1828), Russian envoy to the Tuscan court, philanthropist, honorary citizen of Florence. In the center of the square, under a glass openwork canopy, there is a monument to Demidov by Lorenzo Bartolini. In the center - Demidov in the form of a Roman senator, who hugs his little son; a female figure, symbolizing Gratitude, presents him with a laurel wreath. In the corners there are four allegory statues: Nature, Art, Mercy and Siberia (the latter holds Plutos with a bag of gold in her arms). The monument was created by order of the son of the envoy Anatoly Nikolaevich Demidov and presented to them as a gift from Florence.

The foundation of the Demidov family, which played a significant role in the new history of Florence, was laid by the son of a Tula peasant blacksmith, Nikita Demidovich Antufiev. In 1696, Peter the Great, on his way to Voronezh, stopped in Tula and ordered to ask local craftsmen if they would undertake to forge three hundred halberds according to the brought sample in a month. The only person who wanted to call the king was the blacksmith Nikita Antufiev. Shortly after the first test, Peter ordered him to make guns according to a foreign model, and Antufiev again coped with the royal task with honor. In gratitude, Peter granted the master a piece of land on the banks of the Tulitsa, the right to mine iron ore and the name Demidov. After some time, the Demidovs received vast lands in the Urals and Siberia as a gift from the tsar, and opened magnetic, silver and copper mines there. According to Golikov, Peter's biographer, in 1715, when the tsar's son, Peter Petrovich, was born, Nikita Demidov sent "a lot of precious gold things from ancient Siberian burial mounds and one hundred thousand rubles in money" to the prince. In 1720, Peter raised Nikita Demidovich Demidov to hereditary nobility.

Nikita Demidov died on November 17, 1725 and was buried in Tula at the Church of the Nativity of Christ (called Demidovskaya), in an iron tomb under the porch. His son Akinfiy Nikitich expanded his father's business, and when he died in 1745, his three sons - Prokofy, Grigory and Nikita Demidov inherited a huge fortune: dozens of mines and factories, other real estate, as well as more than thirty thousand peasants (assigned eternal serfs) .

Monument to the honorary citizen of Florence Nikolai Nikitich Demidov on the square named after him.

Prokofy Akinfievich Demidov was the first of the Demidovs to visit Europe during a long trip abroad. Historian S. N. Shubinsky wrote:

“The purpose of this trip was, of course, the desire to look at overseas luxury and experience those entertainments and pleasures that could not be obtained in Russia for any money. Stopping in all the main cities of Europe, Prokofy Akinfievich indulged in such an idle and noisy life and made such monstrous purchases of various luxury items that he horrified foreigners. Feasting at Demidov's Lucullus feasts, they shook their heads in bewilderment and said in each other's ear: “How he shakes! Will he leave here with something?", while Prokofy Akinfievich, meanwhile, laughed aloud at the poverty of Europe, saying that he had nowhere to spend money and that he could not get even the most necessary things for himself. Such insane throwing of money, of course, soon made Demidov's name known abroad. Everywhere he went, he was received like a prince,- With honors and servility."

In Russia, Prokofy Demidov lived in Moscow, because in St. Petersburg, according to the same biographer, "the presence of the court restrained his arbitrariness, and the courtly splendor partly overshadowed the pomp with which he surrounded himself." Having inherited several houses in Moscow, Prokofy built another house of the most intricate architecture on Basmannaya Street near Razgulyal and sheathed it all with iron on the outside - as a protection against frequent fires at that time.

Shubinsky: “The interior decoration of the house was magnificent and fully corresponded to the colossal wealth of the owner. Masses of gold, silver and native stones dazzled the eyes, on the walls, upholstered in damask and velvet, luxurious pictures flaunted; mirrored windows and stairs were lined with rare plants; furniture made of palm, black and rosewood struck with its finest, like lace, carving; carpets of tiger, sable, and bear skins lay on the mosaic floors; birds from all over the world were hung on the ceilings in golden cages; tame monkeys, orangutans and other animals walked around the rooms; various kinds of fish swam in the marble pools; the melodic sounds of organs skillfully built into the walls amused the ears of visitors; in the dining-room figurative silver fountains continuously spouted wine; a luxurious and plentiful dinner was ready at any time for everyone - in a word, Demidov concentrated in his house all the luxury and splendor that were only available to art and fantasy of that time.

Biographers of the Demidov family testify that over the years, the oddities of Prokofy Akinfievich have increased. He traveled around Moscow in no other way than in a train, in a rattletrap painted with bright orange paint. The crew consisted of two small horses at the root, two huge ones in the middle with a barely noticeable postilion, and two also small horses in front, with a postilion so tall that long legs he was dragged along the pavement. The livery of the lackeys was in perfect harmony with the harness: one half was sewn from gold brocade, the other from the coarsest kermyag; one leg of the footman was shod in a silk stocking and shoe, the other in onuchi and bast shoes. When it became fashionable to wear glasses, Demidov put them on not only for his servants, but even for horses and dogs ...

Coat of arms of the Demidovs on the facade of the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore.

However, Prokofy Demidov went down in history not only for his extravagance. He donated huge sums to Moscow University; With his own money, he founded a commercial school in Moscow for a hundred boys from merchant families. For his charitable work, Empress Catherine the Great granted him the rank of real state councilor. In November 1786, P. A. Demidov died and was buried in the Donskoy Monastery behind the altar of the Sretenskaya Church; the grateful University sent a whole deputation to the coffin of the deceased.

He traveled to Europe in 1771-1773. and another son of Akinfiy Demidov - Nikita Akinfievich, heir to the Nizhny Tagil part of his father's fortune. This journey is described in detail in Demidov's published in Moscow in 1786 "Diary of travel to foreign countries." In a "pre-notification" to him, Demidov's secretary wrote:

“The main motivation for his noble Nikita Akinfievich to undertake this journey was the incessant illness of Alexandra Evtikhievna, his wife, for the gentlemen of the doctors, who used her, using many methods of their knowledge, but without success, finally responded that they did not find any other means to heal her, except how to go to the waters located in the Spa. This advice and hope, in order to see his wife in perfect health, prompted him to undertake such a long journey.

Treatment with mineral waters at the Belgian spa resort was successful, and the next year, in Paris, A. E. Demidova (née Safonova) successfully gave birth to a daughter, Ekaterina. To celebrate, Nikita Demidov ordered the young Russian sculptor Fedot Ivanovich Shubin, who came to Paris from Rome, where he trained, marble busts - his own and his wife (they are now in the Tretyakov Gallery). Fedot Shubin, who settled in the Demidovs' Parisian apartments, set to work and, at the same time, spoke in such a fascinating way "about Roman antiquities and all memorable things", What "Aroused a desire to see Italy."

In early December 1773, the Demidovs, leaving their little daughter in Paris "well looked after" set off on their way to Italy, “with the intention of inspecting such a land that was abundant in all works and, moreover, great people, heroes, officials, citizens, scientists and artists.” They were accompanied by two Parisian acquaintances - Prince Sergei Sergeevich Gagarin (later acting Privy Councilor and Russian envoy in London) and the future famous historian and collector Count Alexei Ivanovich Musin-Pushkin. They took Shubin on a trip - "according to his satisfied knowledge of the Italian language."

Through Lyon and Chambery, Russian travelers arrived by stagecoaches to the capital of the Piedmontese kingdom of Turin, where they stopped at the inn "City of London". Then we traveled for a long time by mail coach through Milan, Parma and Bologna (everywhere visiting local sights), "because of the muddy road, for then it was autumn and winter together." With special difficulties overcame the path from Bologna to Florence - "because of the great snow that lay on the mountains." 7 January 1773 they finally reached Florence - the capital of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, where they then lived for two weeks.

A familiar English envoy introduced the Russian guests to Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo I (brother of Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II of Habsburg) and Grand Duchess Maria Luisa (daughter of the Spanish King Charles III), who gave them a special reception. Travelers made a number of important visits (for example, to the palace of the Corsini princes on the right bank of the Arno), visited the Pergola opera house on Via Ghibellina, dressed, according to local custom, in fancy dress, because “in all Italy, except for papal possessions, from Christmas itself to the first week of Great Lent, they even go through the streets and through all the disgrace in masquerade dress.” Several times they visited the Casino (or, in the English manner, the Clobe), a popular institution since the Medici times, where the Florentine elite was used to learning the latest secular and political news, browsing the latest newspapers, drinking coffee that was in vogue and playing cards. This club (Casino Mediceo di San Marco) was located in the quarter between Larga (now Cavour) and San Gallo streets.

The Russian guests began their inspection of the artistic treasures of Florence from the Grand Ducal Uffizi Gallery, where Nikita Akinfievich was especially struck by the sculpture of Venus Medicea in the Tribune Hall, an octagonal room with walls upholstered in crimson velvet, organized back in late XVI V. under Duke Francesco I. N. A. Demidov testifies to this sculptural masterpiece (a Roman copy of the 1st century BC from a lost Greek original), at the end of the 17th century. transported by the Medici from Rome to Florence:

“The most perfect example of this art, is six feet high, with two Cupids in front and a Dolphin on its side. She is presented all naked; the head is turned over to the left shoulder; He holds his right hand, not touching his breasts, and with his left at a certain distance closes what decency forbids to show. It couldn't be better or more perfect."

Demidov's "Diary" also contains the first description in Russian literature of the famous Florentine collection of self-portraits of great artists, which at that time was in a specially designated room of the Uffizi Gallery (later transferred to the "Vasari corridor" on the Ponte Vecchio):

“Here there are many original paintings by the best painters and are placed in a special room, written off from themselves, and especially the first of them, the most glorious Raphael, portraits.”

The Tribune Room in the Uffizi Gallery. In the depths - Venus Medicea

After examining the Uffizi, the guests moved to the Palazzo Pitti ("it is connected to the gallery and the Old Palace by passages"). Among the many works of painting located here, N. A. Demidov especially singled out the “Seated Madonna” by Raphael Santi:

“The picture is oval, depicting the Mother of God with the eternal baby, whose eyes are so much in point that from whichever side you look, it seems to be penetratingly looking everywhere; known as Madona della Sedia monogram Rafaelova. It is written to the waist in full size. It is impossible to draw or give a more perfect image, as in this picture. Demidov's opinion about the Grand Duchy of Tuscany is interesting:

“The Duchy of Tuscany, formerly called Etruscan, can be considered the most prosperous, for its land is fruitful and abounds in all the necessary products. The trade is sent in good condition with olive oil, silk and wool. Troops here only count up to boooo man; but in case of need, the duke can support thirty thousand; and as he is the brother of the Roman emperor and the son-in-law of the Spanish king, the former can supply him with people in case of need, and the latter with money, through which he will be protected from any attack and oppression of the neighboring. In this duchy, as we were told, there are up to a million inhabitants. About three million rubles are collected from all our money. The local inhabitants are generally the kindest and most honest people and are not at all inclined to theft; for the robbed, and especially the murdered, are very rarely found.

The capital of Tuscany was especially liked by the Demidovs:

“The whole city of Florence and all the streets are paved with large smooth stones tightly connected. The river Arno flows through the whole of this city and divides it in half. She has, as they say, at the time of the spill up to 70 sazhen width; It originates in the Apennine mountains, and flows near Pisa into the Tuscan Sea ... The building in this city, in general, is the best, the houses are not huge, but capable of living, the streets are quite wide and clean; the inhabitants are affectionate and treat strangers in a friendly way. Food supplies and stuff are all cheap…”

After Florence, the travelers went to Rome, where they stayed for a month, then spent three weeks in Naples and its environs. On the way back, they again visited Rome (having watched the Easter celebrations), and having reached Tuscany, this time they stopped in Pisa, where in early April 1773 the court of the Grand Duke was located. "for the celebration of the cavalier feast of St. Stephen, for this order is the Duke of the Grand Master."

N. A. Demidov describes Pisa as follows:

“Pisa has a special archbishopric, the second ducal city, and the first after Florence. Quite large, the streets in it are spacious, paved with large stones, and the houses, generally speaking, are beautifully built. All sorts of ships can go along the Arno River. It is twice as wide as the Tiber in Rome. Three stone bridges were built across this river, of which the middle one is all marble. The Pisa cathedral church is similar to the building of Siena, only the local one is larger and its position is more advantageous: the bell tower, according to its special architecture, leaning very much to the right side, is made all of marble with columns of considerable six tiers. Its likeness is a real cylinder. The surface is flat and surrounded by a balustrade, from which we lowered lead or a plumb line on a rope, then it became fifteen steps from the foundation.

In the main port of the Grand Duchy - Livorno, the Demidovs met with the officers of the Russian fleet, who lived in the hired large palazzo of the commander-in-chief, Count A. G. Orlov. On the way from Pisa to the port of Lerici, near the town of Sartsana, a story happened with the Demidovs' carriage that had every chance of ending tragically for the Demidovs and their unborn heir. Here is an entry from the Travel Diary:

“Moving through a small but steep cape, at the carriage in which Alexandra Evtikhievna was sitting, being pregnant, Nikita Akinfievich and Mikhail Savich Borozdin(colonel, future lieutenant general, who joined the Demidovs in Rome. - A.K.) two horses in front broke away. The root two could not hold the carriages, they were dragged by the burden of it into a gully, on the edge of which a standing tree kept the swiftness of the fall ... The carriage, although it turned over with its wheels, did not fall so much, which is why no one suffered much damage, however, everyone was extremely scared. With great difficulty, a carriage was taken out of the gully on bulls, on which they plowed near the place there ... "

Happily avoiding danger, the Demidovs sailed from Lerici on two small sailing feluccas to Genoa, and from there, through Turin, the Alpine passes and Switzerland, they returned to France.

On the way back to Russia, shortly before returning to St. Petersburg, on November 9, 1773, a happy event for the family happened in the town of Chirkovitsy beyond Narva: Alexandra Evtikhievna Demidova “From the eighth hour, she began to feel the approach of her homeland, for which they immediately sent for the grandmother, and meanwhile they begged the postmaster's wife not to leave assistance in this case. And in g hours and a quarter she was safely relieved of the burden, and to the indescribable joy of her husband, God gave him a son, as if in reward for his long and difficult journey, undertaken by him solely for her healing. The newborn, after reading the prayer, was named Nicholas.

Nikolai Nikitich Demidov moved to Florence from Paris after the death of his first wife Elizaveta Alexandrovna (née Stroganova) and soon replaced N. F. Khitrovo as Russian envoy at the court of the Grand Duke of Tuscany. Count D.P. Buturlin, who also spent many years in Florence, described the life and customs of the Russian colony in Florence when N.N. Demidov was there, who, according to Buturlin, "he lived there as a sovereign prince":

Demidov Palace in Florence. 1820s

However, like his uncle, more than eccentricities, Nikolai Demidov became famous for his charity: he generously helped the city, donated to the church, founded several schools in Florence. After his death, the inheritance passed from his son, Anatoly Nikitich Demidov. He was married to the native niece of Napoleon I - Matilda (daughter of Jerome - the brother of the emperor), acquired the principality of San Donato near Florence and built a villa there. The house church of the Demidovs in San Donato was for a long time the main temple of all Orthodox in Florence. Anatoly Demidov multiplied the richest collections of his father, replenishing them with a large number of precious marble and bronze vases, statues, busts, including those dug during the excavations of Pompeii and Herculaneum. When, much later, the Demidov collections were transported by sea to St. Petersburg, several large ships were required.

A. N. Demidov died in 1870 childless, and his nephew, Pavel Pavlovich Demidov, inherited his huge fortune, which was based on Nizhny Tagil factories and lands in Siberia and the Urals. He was born in October 1839 in Weimar, lost his father early and was raised by his mother, Aurora Karlovna (nee Shernval), who married A. N. Karamzin, the son of the famous historian. Pavel Demidov graduated from the law faculty of St. Petersburg University, and then continued to serve in Russian diplomatic missions in Europe. His biographer wrote of him:

“Impetuous, passionate, often carried away, young Demidov, in a wide range of diverse impressions, was able to find and recognize those aspects of human life on which the attention of people who revel in life never stops ... The rich man first of all wanted to know poverty and disaster. Spoiled or, to put it more directly, depressed by the blessings of life, Demidov was not satisfied with the vanity and was looking for the truth. Even in Paris, he approached people of a spiritual direction and sought support in friends of the church and gospel wisdom ... "

After the death of his first wife, Maria Elimovna (nee Princess Meshcherskaya), Pavel Demidov left the diplomatic service, returned to Russia and settled in the provincial city of Kamenets, and then in Kiev, where he was first an honorary justice of the peace, and then the mayor. He was engaged in charity, actively donating to the needs of the city, the university and the church.

Villa Demidov Pratolino near Florence

Pavel Demidov also visited Tuscany, where he inherited possessions in San Donato from his uncle. In Florence, he continued the traditions of the family: he opened several schools, cheap canteens, and overnight shelters. In 1872, already married for the second time to Princess Elena Petrovna Trubetskoy (daughter of the St. Petersburg marshal of the nobility), he acquired the Pratolino estate, twenty kilometers from Florence along the old Bologna road. The villa in Pratolino was built in the 70s of the 16th century. Francesco I Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, for his beloved and later wife, Bianca Capello. Enthusiastic descriptions of the villa were left by Montaigne and Torquato Tasso. By the beginning of the XIX century. the villa fell into complete disrepair, the old palace was destroyed, and the new owner, P.P. Demidov, rebuilt the old page building under the main building. The grandiose sculpture of Giambologna "Allegory of the Apennines" continues to be an attraction of the park of Villa Pratolino.

Sculpture of Giambologna "Allegory of the Apennines" ("Colossus") in the park of Villa Pratolino

With the permission of the Russian Emperor Alexander II, Pavel Demidov accepted the title of Prince of San Donato granted to him by the Italian King Victor Emmanuel and two awards - the Order of St. Mauritius and Lazarus and the Order of the Italian Crown. In 1879, the citizens of Florence presented P. Demidov with a gold medal with the image of him and the princess and the address, delivered to San Donato by a special deputation, which included representatives of all the city's corporations. The municipality elected the Duke and Duchess of San Donato honorary citizens of Florence on this occasion.

Pavel Pavlovich Demidov died in his villa near Florence in 1885, at the age of forty-six; his body was first buried in Pratolino, and then transported to Russia.

Villa San Donato in the north-west of Florence was sold in 1880 - now there is the Florentine city hospital. Even earlier, in 1879, the house church, which had existed since 1840, was abolished; its decoration (iconostasis, icon cases, kliros, carved doors by Barbetti) were transferred to the Orthodox Church in Florence on Via Leone X, built according to the project of architect M. T. Preobrazhensky. The "lower temple" of the church was consecrated in 1902 in the name of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker - the patron saint of Nikolai Nikitich Demidov, the founder of the Florentine family line.

After the death of P.P. Demidov, the Pratolino estate passed to his daughter Maria Pavlovna, who lived all her life in Italy and died there in 1956. She bequeathed the Villa and the estate to her nephew Pavel, the offspring of the Yugoslav royal family Karageorgievich.

Denis Ivanovich Fonvizin

Denis Ivanovich Fonvizin (04/14/1745, Moscow - 12/12/1792, St. Petersburg) - playwright, publicist, diplomat. A native of an old noble family: his ancestor, Baron Peter von Vizin, a knight of the sword, was taken prisoner under Ivan the Terrible during the Livonian War, and then transferred to the Russian service. In the 17th century The Fonvizins changed their Lutheranism to Orthodoxy and over the years became completely Russified: Pushkin called Fonvizin "a Russian from the pre-Russians."

Having already established himself as a translator and playwright, D. I. Fonvizin in 1769 became a close collaborator of the head of the Russian diplomatic department, Catherine's Vice-Chancellor, Count Nikita Ivanovich Panin, and, on his behalf, participated in several diplomatic missions to Europe. Over time, he became a connoisseur of European culture and, in partnership with the German merchant G. Klosterman, supplied objects of Western art to Empress Catherine II, the heir to Pavel Petrovich, the Panin family and other Russian aristocrats.

Herman Klosterman gave the following description to his older friend and business partner:

“In a comic way, he may be the first writer in Russia, and it is not without reason that he is called the Russian Moliere ... Fonvizin was distinguished by his lively imagination, subtle mockery, the ability to quickly notice the funny side and present it with amazing fidelity in faces; from this his conversation was extraordinarily pleasant and cheerful, and the company was enlivened by his presence. With the high qualities of the mind, he combined the most sincere innocence and cheerfulness, which he retained even in the most fatal cases of his troubled life ... "

After the death of Nikita Panin, Fonvizin, who by that time had become a wealthy man, retired with a large pension and, with the intention of improving his health and replenishing art collections, in 1784 he once again went to Europe, entrusting the care of his property in Russia to Klosterman. According to the latter's memoirs, “after things were put in order, Fonvizin, accompanied by his wife, went abroad, stocking up on a passport, many letters of recommendation, a thousand chervonets in pure money, ten thousand Dutch guilders, and bills from the local trading house of the Livio brothers. He went to Riga, Konigsberg, etc., and, without denying himself anything and enjoying the journey, reached the goal of his desires - beautiful Italy. He disposed to live in this garden of Europe and wanted to choose Nice or Pisa as a place of residence, so that in a wonderful climate he could be treated by bathing ... "

Fonvizin's faithful companion on a trip to Europe was his wife Ekaterina Ivanovna (nee Rogovikova, Khlopova by her first husband), who, being the daughter of a wealthy merchant, herself had a great taste for art and good business acumen.

Having visited Germany and Austria, the Fonvizins, through the Brennen Alpine Pass, crossed to Italy. The first Italian city on their way (although then under the rule of the Austrian emperor) was Bolzano, in describing which Fonvizin does not hide the bias caused, apparently, both by character traits (Herzen later spoke of Fonvizin’s “demonic sarcasm”) and painful condition:

“This city is surrounded by mountains, and its situation is not at all pleasant, because it lies in a pit. The inhabitants in it are half Germans, and the other Italians. People speak more Italian. The way of life is Italian, that is, quite a lot of disgusting. The floors are stone and dirty; dirty linen; bread, which among us the poor do not eat; their pure water is what we have slop. In a word, we, seeing this threshold of Italy, were timid ... "

Alas, not a single Italian city on the way to Florence received a good characterization from Fonvizin: “The theater is infernal: it was built without a floor and on a damp place. In two minutes, mosquitoes tore me to pieces, and after the first scene I ran out of it like a madman.(about the theater in Bolzano); “In the best tavern, stench, uncleanness, abomination, all our feelings were tormented. We grieved all evening that we stopped by the cattle.(about a hotel in Trento); “Unspeakable abomination, stench, dampness; I think there were more than a hundred scorpions in the bed we got to sleep on. ABOUT! Bestia Italiana!(about the hotel in Volarni); “The city is crowded and, like all Italian cities, not stinky, but sour. Everywhere smells of sour cabbage. Out of habit, I suffered a lot, restraining myself from vomiting. The stench comes from rotten grapes kept in cellars; and the cellars of every house face the street, and the windows are open ... "(about Verona), etc.

However, delving deeper into Italian life, Fonvizin also decided on more serious generalizations:

"All day in Verona(which was part of the Venetian Republic. - A. K.) we enjoyed the sight beautiful pictures and were offended at almost every step by the beggars they met. Suffering and exhausted extreme poverty are written on their faces; and especially the old people are almost naked, dried up from hunger and usually tormented by some disgusting disease. I do not know how it will be further, but Verona is very capable of arousing compassion. I don’t understand why Venetian government is praised when people suffer hunger in the most fertile land. We have not only never eaten in our lives, we have not even seen such vile bread as we ate in Verona and which all the noblest people eat. The reason for the theme is the greed of the rulers. It is forbidden to bake bread in houses, and the bakers pay the police for permission to mix tolerable flour with foul flour, not to mention the fact that they don’t know how to bake bread. The most annoying thing is that no one can complain about this abuse, because the slightest indignation at the Venetian government is punished very severely.

On the previous spread: Piazza Santissima Annunziata. Ser. 18th century

“The climate here can be called wonderful; but it also has the most disturbing inconvenience for us: mosquitoes have tortured us so that we have Kalmyk faces. They are small and do not squeak, but stealthily bite so cruelly that we cannot sleep at night. And Italian mosquitoes are like the Italians themselves: just as treacherous and just as treacherously biting. If we weigh everything, then for us Russians, our climate is much better.”

In one of the following letters, Fonvizin described his life in Florence with his wife:

“One day is so similar to another that it is almost impossible to distinguish between them. We spent the morning in the galleries and other remarkable places; they usually dined at home; in the evening - either at the conversion, or at the opera; we dined at home... My head sometimes aches, but tolerably; I am in constant motion: from morning to night on my feet. I inspect all the local rarities, and both of us, according to our desire for art, are quite exercised. The people taken with us serve us diligently, and we are satisfied with them. My wife is still without a girl; we want to take in Rome, but here they are all scoundrels.

It was not possible to make interesting acquaintances in Florence:

“We could have many acquaintances, but all of them are not worth the trouble to become attached to. Before Italy, I could not imagine that one could spend one's time in such unbearable boredom as the Italians live. People come to the conversion to talk; with whom to talk and about what? Out of a hundred people, there are not two with whom it would be possible, as with smart people, to say a word. In rare houses they play cards, and then for a hryvnia in an ombre. Their refreshments, of course, are not worth a quarter of a ruble in the evening. Four candles will burn wax and five kopecks of wooden oil. They usually burn oil here ... My banker, a rich man, gave me dinner and invited me to a big campaign. I, sitting at the table, blushed for him: his dinner party was incomparably worse than my daily one in the tavern. In a word, they live here like scareds, and if it were not for the house of the nuncio and the English minister, that is, foreign houses, then there was nowhere to go ... "

However, the acquaintance with the richest culture of Florence helped the Fonvizins. Picking up material for making copies for subsequent sale (the Fonvizins soon spent almost all their funds on this), they went every day to the Pitti Gallery, where Rafael Santi's Seated Madonna made a special impression on them:

“The beautiful Raphael Mother of God, known as the Madonna della Sedia, adorns one room. This image has something divine in it. My wife is crazy about him. She stood in front of him for half an hour, not taking her eyes off, and not only bought a copy of him with oil paints, but also ordered a miniature and a drawing ... "

On November 19, 1784, the Fonvizins left Florence for Pisa (where the court of the Grand Duke of Tuscany spent the winter), and after that they visited Lucca, Rome, Naples, Milan and Venice. In general, Italy made a very poor impression on Fonvizin: his travel notes full of maxims like this:

“It is necessary to write a whole book if you tell all the fraud and meanness that I have seen since my arrival in Italy”; “Honest people throughout Italy, truly to say, are so few that you can live for several years and not meet a single one”; “We are glad that we saw Italy, but we can sincerely admit that if we could imagine it at home as we found it, then, of course, we wouldn’t go ...”

Seated Madonna by Raphael at the Pitti Gallery.

Bridge of Santa Trinita. Ser. 18th century

Application

D. Fonvizin. On the Corruption of Morals in Florence

The corruption of morals in Italy is incomparably greater than in France itself. Here the day of the wedding is the day of the divorce. As soon as the girl is married, then it is imperative to choose for her a cavaliere servente [a faithful knight, beloved. - French], who does not leave her for a minute from morning to night. He travels with her everywhere, takes her everywhere, always sits beside her, deals cards for her and shuffles cards - in a word, he is her servant and, having brought her alone in a carriage to her husband’s house, leaves the house only when she goes to bed with her husband. When a quarrel with a lover or chichisbey occurs, the first husband tries to reconcile them, just as the wife tries to observe agreement between her husband and his mistress. Any lady who did not have a chichisbey would be despised by the whole public, because she would be revered as unworthy of adoration or an old woman. From this it follows that there are neither fathers nor children here. No father regards his wife's children as his own, no son regards himself as the son of his mother's husband. The nobility here is exactly from that in extreme poverty and in extreme ignorance. Everyone ruins his estate, knowing that there is no one to read it; and the young man, having become a chichisbey, as soon as he left the guys, no longer has a minute of time to study, because, apart from sleep, he relentlessly lives in the face of his lady and, like a shadow, staggers after her. Many ladies honestly admitted to me that the inevitable custom of having a chichisbey is their misfortune, and that often, loving their husband incomparably more than their cavalier, it is sad for them to live in such compulsion. You need to know that a wife, waking up, no longer sees her husband until she needs to go to bed ... In general, one can say that there is no land in the world more boring than Italy: no society and stinginess. Here is the first lady, the princess of Santa Croce, who has the whole city at the conversion and who does not have a bowl on the porch during the convention. It is essential that the guest footman has a lantern and shines for his master to climb the stairs. It is necessary to go through many chambers, or, to put it better, barns, where a small lamp of oil burns. Guests are not treated to anything, and not only coffee or tea, not even water. The tightness and stuffiness is terrible, so that the throat will dry up from the heat; but nothing is so bad as the beggarly stinginess of the servants. Wherever you come for a visit, on the very next day after the light, serfs will come and ask for money. There is no such abomination in all of Europe! The masters keep their servants on the smallest salary and not only allow them to beg like this, but after a certain time they divide a cup between them. To tell the truth, the poverty here is unparalleled: beggars stop at every step; no bread, no clothes, no shoes. Everyone is almost naked and so skinny, like skeletons. Here, every working person, if he falls ill for three weeks, is completely ruined. In illness, debt accumulates, and having recovered, he can hardly satisfy his hunger with work. How to pay the debt? He will sell a bed, a dress - and wandered off to beg. There are a great many thieves, swindlers, deceivers; killings are almost daily here. The villain, having killed a man, rushes into the church, from where, according to local laws, no power can take him. Lives in the church for several months; meanwhile, relatives find protection and for the slightest money nurse him forgiveness. In all the papal dominions, among the rabble, there is not a man who does not carry with him a larger knife, some for attack, others for defense. The Italians are all immeasurably evil and the meanest cowards. They never challenge a duel, but usually avenge themselves in an idle manner. Truly, there are so few honest people in all of Italy that one can live for several years and not meet a single one. Persons of the noblest breed are not ashamed to deceive in the meanest way ... Truly, the Germans and French behave much more honestly. There are many idlers among them, but not so much and not so shameless ... "

Petr Yakovlevich Chaadaev

Petr Yakovlevich Chaadaev (05/27/1794, Moscow - 04/14/1856, Moscow) - philosopher, writer. He came from a wealthy noble family, who paternal line ascended to "Chagatai", one of the sons of Genghis Khan. Having lost his parents early, Chaadaev was brought up in the Moscow home of his maternal relatives, the princes Shcherbatovs. In 1808-1810. studied at the verbal faculty of Moscow University. In 1812-1814, as an officer of the Semyonovsky Guards Regiment, he participated in the Patriotic War and foreign campaigns of the Russian army: he was in the battles of Borodino, Tarutino, Maloyaroslavets, Bautzen, Kulm, Leipzig. As part of the Akhtyrsky Hussar Regiment, he took Paris in 1814. In December 1817 he was appointed adjutant to the commander of the hussar corps, Prince IV Vasilchikov; in 1819 he was promoted to captain. In October 1820, he was sent with a report on the uprising of the Semyonovsky regiment to Emperor Alexander I, who was at a congress in Troppau; suddenly, at the end of December 1820, he submitted a letter of resignation and resigned from the service.

In 1823-1826. Captain Chaadaev, a retired Life Guards Hussar Regiment, traveled around Europe: he lived in England, France, and Switzerland. While in Paris, he hatched plans for a trip to Italy (initially, only to Milan and Venice), about which he wrote to his brother Mikhail:

“If Italy does not present anything seductive to your imagination, then this is because you are Huron, but me, who is innocent of this, why do you want to deprive me of the pleasure of seeing her? And then, do you really wish that, being in Switzerland, at the very gates of Italy, and seeing from the heights of the Alps its beautiful sky, I should refrain from descending into this land, which we have been accustomed to consider from childhood a land of enchantment? Think about it, besides the immediate pleasures that such a journey gives, it is also a whole store of memories that you will have for a lifetime, and even your bilious philosophy will agree, I think that it is good to stock up on memories, and especially for someone who is so rarely satisfied with the present ... »

An acquaintance of Chaadaev, diplomat D.N. Sverbeev painted a portrait of a traveler in Europe "beautiful Chaadaev", who hit everyone "with its inaccessible importance, the impeccable elegance of its manners, clothes and mysterious silence":

“He never for one minute forgot to keep himself in a given position, often annoyed all his interlocutors by the fact that, refusing the wine offered to him, for dessert he demanded a bottle of the best champagne, drank one or two glasses from it and solemnly retired ... Me Chaadaev, who left the service almost involuntarily and was very dissatisfied with himself and everyone, in a few words expressed all his indignation at Russia and all Russians without exception. He did not hide in his sharp antics the deepest contempt for everything our past and present, and resolutely despaired of the future. He called Arakcheev a villain, the highest military and civil authorities - bribe-takers, the nobles - vile serfs, the spiritual - ignoramuses, everything else - stagnant and reptiles in slavery ... "

Having crossed the Alps from Switzerland to Milan, Chaadaev suddenly changed his plans, deciding to stay longer in Italy:

“I came here with the intention of making my way through Venice to Vienna and from there home. Here I see that in two months I can travel around Italy. That is, having gone through Genoa and Livorno to Rome, and from there to Naples, return through Florence and be in Venice at the beginning of March ... I don’t have a big desire to set off in Italy, but I need to get rid of it so that I don’t have any more lust in the future.

From a letter from P. Ya. Chaadaev to his brother Mikhail on December 3, 1824, with his new decision, Chaadaev wrote from Milan and to his close friend from Moscow University, the future Decembrist I. D. Yakushkin:

“Having arrived here, I saw that I could travel all over Italy in two months, and I decided on this - the last bad deed; Indeed, a bad, impermissible deed! There is not a single cheerful soul at home, but I walk around and have fun; but tell me, how, having been two weeks away from Rome, not to visit it?

On his way to Rome, Chaadaev arrived in Florence at the beginning of February 1825, where he stayed for almost a month. The city seemed to him a fortress: loopholes on the buildings, gratings with iron hooks gave the Florentine houses the appearance of defensive structures rather than dwellings.

In Florence, Chaadaev was warmly welcomed by an acquaintance from Moscow and St. Petersburg, Alexei Vasilievich Sverchkov, a career diplomat and intelligence officer, a Russian chargé d'affaires in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, who had previously served in Russian missions in the United States of America and Brazil. Sverchkov was married to Elena Guryeva, daughter of the recently deceased Minister of Finance D. A. Guryev and sister of Maria Guryev, wife of the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs (Chancellor) Karl Nesselrode. Chaadaev conveyed greetings to the hosts from Nikolai Dmitrievich Guryev, whom he had recently seen in Paris, his former brother-soldier in the Semyonovsky regiment, and now also a prominent diplomat (later Count Guryev Jr. would represent Russia in Rome and Naples). So, almost every evening in Florence, P. Ya. Chaadaev spent in the hospitable house of the Sverchkov-Guryevs.

View of Florence. Ser. 19th century

However, the main “Florentine meeting” awaited Chaadaev ahead, on January 31, 1825, while visiting one of the palace-museums of Florence, Chaadaev accidentally met with the English Methodist priest Charles Cook, who was returning from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land to his parish in southern France. A few years later, Chaadaev recalled that extremely significant meeting for him:

“Five years ago, in Florence, I met a man whom I liked very much. I spent several hours with him; hours, no more, but pleasant, sweet hours, and then I still did not know how to extract from it all the benefit that I could derive. He was an English Methodist; lived, it seems, on a mission in southern France. When I met him, he had recently returned from Jerusalem. He was struck by a wonderful mixture of liveliness, ardent zeal for the lofty subject of all his thoughts - religion - and indifference, cold disregard for everything else. In the galleries of Italy, the great examples of art did not move his soul, while the small sarcophagi of the first centuries of Christianity inexplicably attracted him. He examined them, sorted them out with a frenzy; I saw in them something sacred, touching, deeply instructive, and willingly immersed myself in the reflections they excited. – So, I repeat: I spent several hours with this man, which soon elapsed, almost an instant, – and since then had no news of him;—and what then? – –

On August 26, 1826, when Chaadaev returned to Russia, he was detained at the border checkpoint in Brest-Litovsk and interrogated on the case of possible involvement in the uprising on Senate Square in St. Petersburg on December 14, 1825: Chaadaev’s close relations with some Decembrists were well known. During a search, among other papers, Chaadaev was found to have a letter of recommendation from Pastor Cook to England, to the priest Thomas Marriott, with the following content: "Florence, Yana. 31, 1825. Dear Sir. Allow me to recommend to your acquaintance and friendly attention, during his stay in London, Mr. P. Chaadaev, who intends to visit England in order to study the causes of our moral well-being and the possibility of applying them to his homeland, Russia. Charles Cook.

The persons who carried out the interrogation and search asked Chaadaev the question: "Who is the Englishman Cook, and what exactly were the reasons for moral well-being that you intended to investigate in England?" He replied:

“The Englishman Cook is a famous missionary. I met him in Florence on his way from Jerusalem to France. Since all his thoughts and the whole circle of actions were turned to religion, I, for my part, spoke to him with sorrow about the lack of faith in the Russian people, especially in the upper classes. On this occasion, he gave me a letter to his friend in London, so that he could acquaint me more with the moral disposition of the people in England. Since I was not in England after this, then this letter remains with me, and after that I had no communication with Cook and Marriott and even heard nothing about them.

“I spent several hours with this man, which soon passed, almost an instant, – and since then had no news of him; - and what? – now I enjoy his company more than the company of other people. Every day the memory of him visits me; it brings with it such excitement, such a thought of the heart, that it strengthens me against the sorrows that surround me, protects me from the frequent attacks of despondency. – Here is a society befitting rational beings! this is how souls act mutually on one another: time and space cannot be an obstacle to them ... "

Osip Emilievich Mandelstam, a deep connoisseur of both Italy and Chaadaev’s work, wrote in one of his essays about the spiritual impulse that the trip to Europe gave to the subsequent philosophical creativity Chaadaeva:

“In an infant country, a country of half-living matter and half-dead spirit, the hoary antinomy of the inert block and the organizing idea was almost unknown. Russia, in the eyes of Chaadaev, still belonged wholly to the unorganized world. He himself was the flesh of the flesh of this Russia and looked at himself as raw material. The results are amazing. The idea organized his personality, not only his mind, gave this personality structure, architecture, subjugated him completely and, as a reward for absolute submission, gave him absolute freedom. Deep harmony, almost a fusion of the moral and mental elements give Chaadaev's personality a special stability. It is difficult to say where the mental end and where it begins moral personality Chaadaev, to such an extent they are approaching a complete merger. The strongest need of the mind was for him at the same time the greatest moral necessity ... When Boris Godunov, anticipating the thought of Peter, sent Russian young people abroad, not one of them returned. They did not return for the simple reason that there is no way back from existence to non-existence, that in stuffy Moscow those who tasted the immortal spring of undying Rome would suffocate. But even the first doves did not return to the ark. Chaadaev was the first Russian who actually visited the West ideologically and found his way back. Contemporaries instinctively felt this and terribly appreciated the presence of Chaadaev among them. They could show him with superstitious respect, as once upon Dante: "This one was there, he saw - and returned" ... "

Nikolay Vladimirovich Stankevich

Nikolai Vladimirovich Stankevich (09/27/1813, Ostrogozhsk, Voronezh province - 06/25/1840, Novi Ligure, Sardinian kingdom) - poet, philosopher, public figure. Born into a noble family. In 1830-1834. studied at the verbal department of Moscow University, created and headed the famous literary and philosophical circle in Moscow. In the mid 1830s. was sent by Moscow University to Germany, where he continued his studies in philosophy and history at the University of Berlin.

In the summer of 1839, for the treatment of tuberculosis, he traveled to the resorts of the Czech Republic, Southern Germany, Switzerland, then went to Italy. His travel companion was Alexander Pavlovich Efremov, a friend in the Moscow circle, then at the University of Berlin, later a doctor of philosophy and professor of geography.

With great difficulty, friends overcame the Simplon Pass separating Switzerland and Italy, since the early autumn rains had already flooded the valleys. Part of the mountain road had to be walked. On October 12, 1839, Stankevich wrote to his relatives:

“There is nothing to do, we armed ourselves with umbrellas, loaded our suitcases on the Swiss who came to meet us and went ... This transition turned out to be worthy of Suvorov! Finally, I am in Italy - and I myself can hardly believe it myself! Then, in a postal carriage, we headed along the coast of Lago Maggiore to Milan, and then to Genoa. Stankevich's biographer, writer P. V. Annenkov, described the beginning of his Italian journey:

“The first glance at Italy did not produce on Stankevich that joyful feeling that was produced by the world more familiar to him, Germany. The tribal traits of Italy are much stricter, and we have much less preparations for accepting and understanding them. Italy requires a certain acquiescence, a certain self-confidence, especially the elimination of deep-rooted habits in life and even in judgment; then it reveals itself in the grandeur of its simplicity or backwardness, if you like. Stankevich peered at her daily life for a long time, at this mixture of classical and medieval customs, enclosed in a strictly elegant frame formed by unchanging nature ... "

From Genoa, the travelers went by sea to Livorno, the main port of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany:

“From the moment of sailing until the very landing on the shore, I was tormented by unbearable nausea, so that for two days afterwards I could not indifferently hear the words: the sea and the ship. This was probably my last trip by sea.(so, alas, it happened - A. K.). We took a glimpse of Livorno, which was seething with sellers, buyers, factors and scammers (this is a free port) and hurried to Florence.

Letter to parents November 4, 1839 from Florence

The consumptive Stankevich originally intended to spend the winter in Pisa, located closer to the sea, but in the end he preferred Florence. On November 4, 1839, he wrote to his parents from the capital of Tuscany: “Finally, I’m in Florence and I’m not overjoyed at a permanent home ... At first I thought of wintering in Pisa, not far from here, – but as Florence is much nicer, I preferred to stay here. Until now, the local climate seems to me very good. Today, November 4, my windows are open, and a warm wind replaces the firewood. In Pisa, they say, it is even warmer, but I am more afraid of her low position, and most importantly, of the fact that, according to the general verdict, she is rather boring and full of visiting patients. I don't want to put myself in that category. For the first few days, I was busy looking for an apartment, and therefore I still saw few local miracles. The city is not large and the streets are quite cramped - which takes away the view from many beautiful buildings ... "

Piazza Santa Maria Novella. In the house closest to the church in 1839-1840. lived N. V. Stankevich

In the capital of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, Stankevich settled on Santa Maria Novella Square, in the house closest to the famous church (now it is one of the buildings of the Minerva Grand Hotel). He wrote to his parents about his new apartment:

“I found my home in Piazza Santa-Maria Novella, to the south, as I wanted. I have a fairly large room and a small office for sleeping. It costs 40 francs (rubles) per month. Mirrors are very much loved here, and therefore I have three of them in one room, and very large ones, but there are just as many chairs ... "

In subsequent letters to his parents, Stankevich regularly described his life in Florence, tirelessly reassuring his loved ones about his health:

“I have already notified you that I have a special apartment, – so far I am very pleased with it. Thanks to her position, I manage so far without firewood, despite the fact that it has already been several cool days here, but this cold is felt especially only in the cramped streets and, moreover, more in the rooms than in the yard. On our square, in clear weather, it is unbearably hot. It rains quite often, but on the other hand, in a quarter of an hour, all the streets are paved slightly sloping in the middle, so that the water does not hold on to them and quickly runs into this depression, through which it flows where it needs to. But for several days we enjoyed a completely clear sky: at that time, all of Florence was empty, residents and foreigners scattered around the neighborhood ... To tell the truth, we need a clear sky in Italy more than anywhere else. All that is good in her – for eyes. If the mist fell on this side for a long time, it would not be worth staying in it. It’s a different matter in Germany: there the bucket and bad weather mean little, and the traveler can always observe, learn and share all his thoughts with good Germans, because there is no thing in the world that would not interest them and about which they would not talk. Know every land its own: and we must thank Italy for the fact that it refreshes and amuses our senses and warms the bones ... "

From a letter to parents on November 12, 1839

“For more than a month now I have been living in Florence and taking advantage of her benefits: she is very merciful to me. Despite the predictions of everyone who has ever spent the winter in Florence, promising cold, the time hardly changes. Occasionally it rains, but almost the same as we have in May, so one umbrella is enough to walk the streets, and the overcoat is put on only to imitate the Italians, who are very fond of wrapping up ... They say that Florence wants to indulge in fun. Theaters stop little by little for the balls with which the carnival will be marked. However, all this is not my part, and my amusements are limited to walks around the city, its environs, churches and collections of various curiosities; here, in passing, I train my eye and prepare it for those miracles that await it in Rome. I’m thinking of staying here until the end of February, and at the beginning of March I’ll go to Rome, where the whole world gathers for Shrovetide ... The Italians are very behind the rest of Europe in everything and seem to live from day to day. The land is better than the people here – however, they are rather kind, helpful and quick-witted; from the upper class, I have not known Italians until now, and among the common people there are, by the way, features that are very reminiscent of our Russian peasants; here belongs, among other things, the habit of haggling, which exists in all, even the best, stores. – But what surprises me the most is the ability of small traders to shout all day, morning to evening, in a deafening voice, in order to sell a few sulfur matches or drops to exterminate bedbugs. It is impossible not to stop walking past these heroes, who enthusiastically extol their product and offer it to everyone passing by .... "

From a letter to parents on December 5, 1839

In Florence, Stankevich also maintained a correspondence with an old friend in Moscow and Berlin, Timofey Nikolaevich Granovsky, on February 1, 1840, he wrote to him:

“The first days I ran a lot through the galleries, outside the city, rode horseback and did almost nothing; finally, he caught himself, began to work somehow ... The local galleries are really rich and even to me, a barbarian, they give a lot of pleasure ... Now a few words about Florence: the first glance at it is not at all amazing. The streets are terribly narrow and dark: it seems that they deliberately tried to hide from the sun in them. The houses that run along the Arno on both sides are very unpicturesque, except for a few. But on the other hand, four glorious bridges are thrown across it, and the view along the river, up and down, is very good: you survey the hillocks with gardens, villas, and so on ... On holidays, morning until evening, you see crowds walking along the Arno, and in the evening caffes are filled with men and women ... There is a park - Kashino; every decent day there are many carriages and riders in it; pedestrians walk along the embankment near the Arno; the air is sometimes intoxicating; thousands of villas surrounding Florence, in the evening light make an extraordinary view. The Boboli Garden, which belongs to the Palace of the Grand Duke, surpasses everything I have seen so far from the gardens. Our square, S-ta Maria Novella, is also not bad. On it stands a beautiful church and two monuments; but unfortunately, the porches surrounding these monuments are always dirty with boys ... I read several boring dramas and novels to improve myself in Italian; I am now finishing the Florentine History by Machiavelli ... "

Signoria Square with Palazzo Vecchio

Loggia de Lanzi in Piazza della Signoria

Stankevich liked the mild winter in Florence, and he invited Granovsky to join him next year:

“I confess that you did badly that you didn’t ask the count to leave for the winter in Italy - he would probably agree (we are talking about the trustee of Moscow University gr. S. G. Stroganov - A. K.). Couldn't you go somewhere next summer to the waters, but definitely come here for the winter? Think about it, Granovsky! Is it possible to go to the waters in the spring: to Ems, for example, or somewhere? .. Don't forget: winter, winter in Italy, – it will mean a lot."

P. V. Annenkov noted Stankevich’s “special style” when visiting new places in Europe. Many of them, glorified by road guides, Stankevich considered "punishment of travelers":

“Not to see is a shame, but to look is not worth it. He does not look into the book, surrendering entirely to his own impressions ... The general character of freedom, space, given by his own susceptibility, not constrained by other people's ideas ... "

At the end of December Stankevich's Florentine friend, an Englishman of Kenya, organized a trip to Livorno and Pisa, about which Stankevich wrote on January 3, 1840 in a joking letter to his younger sisters:

“He has such a nice, well-stacked carriage; he put both cookies and bread and butter in it - we, he says, will travel for four days; we will leave on Thursday, we will arrive on Sunday; hired horses, wrote in advance to the innkeepers that we should have rooms with a fireplace, – and we moved ... Wonderful side! So that you don’t get too annoyed even with the beggars who are constantly running on both sides of the carriage ... Efremov is very funny on the road: by 4 o’clock he usually starts asking me: do I feel something special? This means he is hungry. And after dinner - he usually immediately goes to bed ... "

At the end of February, the weather in Florence changed, the north winds blew, and the doctors advised Stankevich to go to the south of Italy. He arrived in Rome on March 8, 1840 and rented an apartment on the third floor at the address: Corso, 71. Then, in Rome, he took under his wing the young Ivan Turgenev, who left us a portrait of Stankevich of that time:

“Stankevich was more than average in height, very well built - according to his build, it was impossible to assume that he was prone to consumption. He had fine black hair, a sloping forehead, small brown eyes; his eyes were very affectionate and cheerful, his nose was thin, humpbacked, handsome, with moving nostrils, his lips were also rather thin, with sharply marked angles.

Due to an aggravated illness, Stankevich could not make a campaign for Efremov and Turgenev on their trip to Naples, but decided to rest in the town of Albano near Rome, from where he wrote to his Russian friends Frolov who remained in Florence:

“The journey is still not easy for me because of the pains that all wander on the right side from place to place and do not allow me to sleep decently ... The air would not be bad here if I could walk far, but this way I can only enjoy the magnificent view from my windows. My room is for a poet: a dirty, brick floor, faded walls, small, but with a window in the middle, from where you can see the wooded hills, the plain and the sea in the distance. The servant, about 55 years old, if not more, is fat and with a red nose, he speaks exactly like a Gogol judge, like an old clock that first wheezes, then beats.

Letter from N. G. and E. P. Frolov, dated April 1840, from Albano.

One of the last joys for Stankevich was the arrival in Rome of Varvara Alexandrovna Dyakova (nee Bakunina) - younger sister his early deceased bride Lyubov Bakunina. Varvara Dyakova then actually separated from her husband and traveled around Europe with her four-year-old son Alexander.

May 19, 1840 Stankevich wrote big letter to the famous philosopher and politician Mikhail Bakunin, brother of Lyubov and Barbara - his dead bride and his last found love:

“My dear Michel!.. First of all, I will tell you that Varvara Alexandrovna is here in Rome. I was about to go to Naples, I fell ill - and she, having learned about it, came on purpose to see me ... Now you can judge what the holy, brotherly participation of your sister is for me, – I don't know how to tell you a word about what her arrival has done, but she sees it, I'm sure of it. I only ask myself day and night: for what? what is happiness for? It is not deserved at all.

She surrounds me with the strongest, most holy brotherly love; she spread a sphere of bliss around me, I breathe more freely, my health and heart have risen, I am becoming stronger and holier ... I am still weak, although I am getting better every day since the arrival of your sister ... Today, at a general consultation, it is supposed that I went to Lago di Soto and drank Ems water there. Varvara Alexandrovna also intends to go there, and we are thinking of spending the winter together in Nice. This future gives me strength now and makes my heart tremble with joy ... "

At the beginning of June 1840, Dyakova and Efremov, who had returned from Naples, took the slightly stronger Stankevich from Rome to Florence. After living there for several days, they left by mail coaches for Genoa, from where they headed for Milan to move further to Lake Como. Stankevich intended to spend the rest of the summer in Germany or Switzerland, and move to Nice for the winter. He still believed that he would overcome the disease and was full of plans for a large philosophical work devoted to the exposition of Hegel's philosophy.

However, at the very first stop, in the town of Novi Ligure, forty miles north of Genoa, Nikolai Alexander Stankevich died on the night of June 24-25, 1840. His body was transported to Genoa and temporarily buried there in one of the churches. After some time, the coffin was loaded onto a ship sailing from Genoa to Odessa, and then transported to the Stankevich family estate Uderevka, Voronezh province (now it is the territory of the Belgorod region).

The death of Stankevich, unexpected for most, became a tragedy for a whole generation of young Russian intellectuals. His younger friend Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev wrote:

“We lost the person we loved, in whom we believed, who was our pride and hope…”

Memories of Stankevich and his letters, carefully collected and published years later, influenced Russian cultural figures who had never seen him during his lifetime. For example, L. N. Tolstoy, after reading Stankevich’s correspondence, wrote to the philosopher B. N. Chicherin:

“Have you read Stankevich's correspondence? My God! what a delight! Here is a man whom I would love as myself. Believe me, I have tears in my eyes now. I just finished it today and I can't think of anything else. It hurts to read it: too true, deadly sad truth. That's where you eat his blood and body. And why, for what did he suffer, rejoice and vainly desire such a sweet, wonderful creature? For what?…"

Fedor Ivanovich Buslaev

Fedor Ivanovich Buslaev (04/13/1818, Kerensk, Penza province - 31-07.1897, Moscow) - philologist, historian, art critic. Specialist in the history of the Russian language, Slavic philology, history of Byzantine and Old Russian art. Professor of Moscow University, since 1861 - academician.

After graduating from the verbal faculty of Moscow University, he was invited to work as a home teacher in the family of Count Sergei Grigoryevich Stroganov, a trustee of the Moscow educational district. In the summer of 1839, Stroganov took him to Italy, where Buslaev was supposed to teach Russian history and literature to the count's children.

Buslaev later recalled the beginning of his first European journey - sailing by sea to Lübeck:

“According to the instructions of Dmitry Lvovich Kryukov, professor of Roman literature, I stocked up in St. Petersburg with Otfried Müller’s guide to the archeology of art, and the manager of Count Stroganov’s houses exchanged Russian banknotes for Dutch ten-franc chervonets for me and, accustomed to serving his illustrious patrons at a high price, took a ticket for me on a steamboat to Lübeck, not second class, but first, which caused considerable damage to my wallet and doomed me to an exclusive position among first-class passengers from high society. In a frayed frock coat of modest cut and a black silk shirt-front instead of Dutch linen, I seemed to be a dark spot on the colorful pattern of the smart suits of the crowd around me. However, this did not bother me in the least, because both sitting in the cabin and walking on deck, I did not have a free minute to pay attention to anyone, sticking my nose into the book of Otfried Müller. All the time on the ship I devoted myself to studying it, in order to gradually and ahead of time prepare myself for special studies in the history of Greek and Roman art and antiquities in Rome and Naples. On the very next day of the voyage, I happened to notice that among my first-class companions I was known as a sculptor or painter sent from the Academy of Arts to Italy to improve my art. This was very flattering to my vanity, and all the more so since I am going on such a long journey and with such a lofty goal, while all the others went - some to have fun in Paris, London or Vienna, and some to gargle their stomachs on mineral waters…»

From Lübeck, Buslaev traveled by stagecoach to Leipzig, from where there was already a railway to Dresden:

“For the first time in my life I went on this newly invented path. I rejoiced and, for greater joy, got into the first-class carriage, and all the time until the very end I remained alone in it, freely enjoying the unprecedented sensations of the dizzying speed of the train ... "

From Leipzig to Naples itself, Buslaev - already together with the Stroganovs - rode in the same carriage with the tutor of the Stroganov sons, doctor of philology, the German Trompeller:

“It was not an easy and fast trip abroad, which is now made on rails, but an old-fashioned real journey, like the one depicted by Karamzin in “Letters from a Russian Traveler”.”

Fyodor Buslaev was then a little over twenty, and he was heading to Italy with an enthusiastic feeling:

“In order for you to fully understand this bright and triumphant mood of my spirit, I must draw your attention to my personal situation and to the external conditions determined by the then order of things. At that time there was still no cheap ferry across the railways now available for people with limited means. Riding horses from Russia not only to Italy, but even to Berlin or Dresden, was then possible for rich people, or at least wealthy people. Moreover, those who went abroad were subject to a heavy tax on each person, five hundred rubles. I, poor man, of course, never even dreamed of finding myself in Italy. There was no end to my joys when such great happiness fell to my lot in reality ... During my entire two-year stay abroad, an uninterrupted bright holiday came for me, in which hours, days, weeks and months - now seem to me an endless string of more and more some rosy impressions, unexpected joys, never before experienced pleasures and breathtaking amazing interests. At that time I was still very young both in years and in my soul... I knew neither people nor the world, and besides my Kerensk, where I was born, except for the Penza gymnasium and the state-owned hostel at the university, I saw nothing else and did not remember. And suddenly an immense and far-reaching prospect opened up in front of me from the Baltic Sea all over Germany, through the Alpine mountains to the wide Lombardy, to the Adriatic Sea to Venice, and from there across the Alps to Florence, Rome and finally to the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. My spirit was occupied, my head was spinning, I could not feel my feet under me in the impetuous expectation of seeing it all, feeling it and experiencing it, assimilating it to my mind and imagination. I dreamed in advance of re-creating myself and transforming myself, and at the same time I was convinced that not my dream, but the real reality, with its enchanting charm, would surpass my wildest fantastic expectations ... "

Count S. G. Stroganov, who had repeatedly visited Italy, this time went there with his whole family: his wife, sons Alexander (a student, a year younger than Buslaev), Pavel, 16 years old, ten-year-old Grigory and one and a half year-old Nikolai, as well as daughters Sophia and Elizabeth 15 and 13 years old. They were accompanied by the German tutor of the eldest sons (Doctor of Philology of one of the German universities), the Lausanne governess of the daughters, the German bonnet of Nikolai, the count's valet, the countess's maid and the cook. There was also a special courier, fluent in four languages, who rode in front of the carriages and made arrangements for dinner and lodging. In the event of long stops, the same courier hired a house or villa for the Stroganovs with all the furnishings and servants. In hotels, wealthy travelers also relied on a guide - "lon-lackey" (in Italian - domestico di piazza).

Count Stroganov, being one of the most educated people of his time, knew Europe very well. He spoke several European languages, was one of the largest collectors of ancient art: in his St. Petersburg house, he collected a huge collection of ancient coins; the Moscow house of Stroganov was famous throughout Europe for its collection of Byzantine and Russian icons. Subsequently, the sons of Stroganov (and students of Buslaev) continued the family tradition: Pavel Sergeevich placed a large art gallery in his St. Petersburg house, and Grigory Sergeevich, who lived mainly in Italy, collected in Rome in his palazzo on via Sistina a unique collection of monuments of ancient Christian and Byzantine art. Buslaev remembered the entrance to Italian Tuscany, when, on the way from Bologna to Florence, travelers had to overcome the Apennine Range:

“On the steep slopes of the mountain, our carriages slowly dragged the oxen harnessed to them, which stepped so lazily and restrainedly that each of us could get ahead of them with an even and medium-sized step. When about two hours later we climbed higher than half the mountain, the sun was already setting to our right. Bored by the tedious, barely noticeable movement of phlegmatic oxen, the count with the children and even the countess herself left the carriages, followed by Trompeller and I. It was for everyone the most pleasant walk in the mountain air of the evening day. The children jumped, stretching their spent legs, and ran up and down the road; the governess and the tutor warned them not to approach the edge of the slopes, which ended abruptly on the right hand; the count walked with the countess. Only I, on my own, slowly stepping along the wall of solid cliffs on the left side, did not pay attention to anything or anyone, deepening in my reading. Suddenly the Count comes up to me. "And you're not ashamed – he says – be such a pedant! They stuck their nose in their Kugler. Drop it and turn back. Look all around at these immense pages of the great book, which is now revealed to us by divine nature itself. I turned back and started looking. From behind the rocks below, a wide plain stretched out before me into a misty distance. Along it, as on a painted land map, hills and hillocks rose and fell here and there in waves; among them were whitewashed small clusters of estates, villages and towns; stretched dark stripes and threads of rivers and canals. I looked at the details, which even now I seem to see in front of me ... "

Travelers sought to quickly reach the Gulf of Naples (where the Stroganovs were going to spend the winter) and therefore in Florence that time they stopped only for a week:

“To study the history of art, I had to be content with only a cursory review of its main periods in individual schools and styles, and from the details - only the largest and especially outstanding, and then on the instructions of Count Sergei Grigorievich, – what, for example, are the oldest works Italian painting XIII century, in which, on the basis of the Byzantine traditions of the flourishing era, there are already glimpses of the high elegance of that fertile environment where, two hundred years later, Michelangelo and Raphael could be born. Of these jewels, I will name you two altarpieces: one in Siena Cathedral, with images of the Passion of the Lord in separate quadrangles, by the ancient painter Duccio di Buoninsegna, and the other in Florence, in one of the chapels of the Maria Novella church, with the image of Our Lady with the Infant Jesus Christ , written by the famous Cimabue, whom Dante mentions in his Divine Comedy ... "

Cimabue. Madonna and Child with Angels (1285). Cathedral of Santa Maria Novella.

Dante's "Divine Comedy" from early youth and for life became, without exaggeration, the main book in Buslaev's life:

“In Florence, I visited the baptistery in which Dante was baptized, as well as the house where he lived in the neighborhood of Beatrice, whom I glorified forever in poetry and prose; Of course, I did not fail to sit down on the stone on which the great poet sat and always admired the beautiful Cathedral of Maria del "Fiore, with a graceful bell tower, which was built and decorated with bas-reliefs by his friend and friend Giotto. Visions of the afterlife, in the mysterious charm of mystical from the walls painted by the disciples and followers of Giotto, in the Florentine church of Maria Novella and in the Dominican monastery adjacent to it. This is the same church in which, during the terrible plague that befell Italy in XIV century, cheerful interlocutors of Boccacciev's "Decameron", gentlemen and ladies, gathered, and agreed to retire together from the infected city to a secluded villa. Michelangelo especially loved this church and called her his bride ... "

Dante's house in Florence.

In November 1839, the Stroganovs finally arrived in Naples, where they lived until April 1840. They spent the summer on the island of Ischia and in a villa in Sorrento, and then moved to Rome, where they lived for several months. They set off on their return journey from Rome in April 1841: again they stopped briefly in Florence; then through Vienna, Warsaw, Brest and Smolensk they arrived in Moscow.

Buslaev later recalled the final moments of his first Italian journey:

“I vaguely remember this return journey through Italy, like a heavy dream with instant glimpses of joy, as happens when you just meet a loved one and immediately say goodbye to him for eternal separation: both joyfully and bitterly. It must have been deep and strong from that time that an anxious feeling of an unsatisfied thirst for that happiness that I did not have time and could not fully enjoy lay in my soul. And for a long time afterwards, for many years, even when I was already a professor, I sometimes dreamed that I was immediately leaving Rome or Florence forever, and there was still so much left for me to see that I had not seen, that I had to say goodbye to the fact that I love so dearly, and it is as if some hostile power is forcibly tearing me out of the arms of a dear friend: I am weary and sad, and I wake up with joy from a painful nightmare ... "

The next time (already the third in a row) F. I. Buslaev, who by that time had become a well-known philologist and art critic, professor and academician, came to Florence many years later, in 1864. This trip was described in detail by him in the essay “Florence in 1864”, which was later included in the first part of the memoirs “My Leisures” (it is used in the second part of this edition under the heading: “Return to Florence”).

Finally, for the fourth time, Buslaev arrived in Florence in 1875 from France (via Turin, Genoa and Pisa), together with his wife Lyudmila Yakovlevna Tronova.

“This is my fourth time in Florence; now she is even dearer and dearer to me. The whole city is a museum, and all this artistic splendor is not brought in from the outside, as in the St. Petersburg Hermitage or in the Louvre in Paris, but it's all homegrown. All these great artists, from the 14th to the 16th centuries, were born here, lived here and gradually decorated their hometown. In order to fully understand the history of art, in order to enjoy the elegant as a necessary, essential element of life, one must live in Florence.

After spending several months in Rome, the Buslaevs returned to Moscow in the autumn of 1875.

Vladimir Dmitrievich Yakovlev

Vladimir Dmitrievich Yakovlev (1817, St. Petersburg - 11/3/1884, St. Petersburg) - poet, translator, traveler, memoirist. He studied at the Imperial Academy of Arts, then at the St. Petersburg Pedagogical Institute. He taught at parochial schools, published poems and stories in the spirit of romanticism. Frustrated health required Yakovlev's obligatory trip to the south, but his material resources were so meager that he was forced at one time to undertake proofreading in several journals, although such work was extremely harmful for him.

However, thanks to a happy coincidence, at the end of 1846, the thirty-year-old writer Yakovlev attracted the attention of the heir to the Russian throne, Grand Duke Alexander Nikolayevich (the future Emperor Alexander II): his wife, Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna, Yakovlev’s wife served as a beloved before marriage. camera girl. The heir-tsarevich, a pupil of the poet Zhukovsky and himself a lover of romantic poetry, then granted the young writer and husband of the court favorite a large sum of five thousand silver rubles for treatment abroad.

End of introductory segment.

He never returned even after his death.

To old Florence.

Anna Akhmatova. "Dante"

There are cities to which there is no return.

Joseph Brodsky. "December in Florence"

“Unreturned…”

The inscription on the gravestone of Lev Karsavin, an admirer of Florence, and also thousands of those who died in the Stalinist camp Abez

“The Laurentian exile Dante is the ancestor and patron of all literary and political emigration,” once said the Russian writer and philosopher Dmitry Merezhkovsky. It is difficult to name another country and culture for which this statement would be more significant and true than in relation to Russia and Russian culture.

Alexander Herzen, Alexander Blok, Osip Mandelstam, Nikolai Berdyaev, Anna Akhmatova, Nikolai Gumilyov, Lev Karsavin, Boris Zaitsev, Pavel Muratov, Vladimir Veidle, Joseph Brodsky - this is just a short list of the names of the great Russians, whose work is inextricably linked with the name and fate of the great Florentine wandering poet.

... On the way to exile, Herzen re-read the Divine Comedy and found that Dante's poems "go equally well to the threshold of hell and to the Siberian highway." In the same place, in exile, Herzen staged home performances - "living pictures" based on Dante, where, of course, he himself played the title role ...

Anna Akhmatova, being evacuated in Tashkent, loved to recite the tertsina of the Divine Comedy in Italian by heart. Relatives recalled what an upsurge seized the Tashkent literary and artistic colony when, at the height of the war, Akhmatova read out a telegram from her friend Mikhail Lozinsky about the completion of his translation of Dante's "Paradise" ...

One of the best connoisseurs of Florentine culture, Leonid Batkin, recalls how during the war he and his mother were evacuated to the depths of Kazakhstan. Everything that I managed to take with me the most necessary things fit in three suitcases, one of which was stuffed with books: “I was nine, then ten, eleven years old ... I reread the contents of the suitcase countless, often inappropriate or inaccessible in a real semantic volume for a teenager, but all the same, somehow irresistibly shaping, saturating consciousness: like nitroglycerin from stickers through the skin penetrates into the blood. Among other things, there was a small volume of Dante in an elegant edition of the Academia… In that Kazakh winter, there were evil snowless frosts, the wind drove impoverished dust through the streets; but the measured movement of sonnets and canzones, the sighs and tears of mystical young love were much more real than the adobe Kyzyl-Orda outside the window ... "

In German-occupied Paris, Russian émigré writer Boris Zaitsev descended into a bomb shelter during Allied air raids with manuscripts of the translation of Dante's Inferno: “When explosions boomed in the distance, I didn’t want him<Данте>leave upstairs for destruction - and he saw the hellish corridors below ... We truly looked like a detachment of sinners from some of his songs ... "

If Rome is the Eternal City, Venice is an extremely artificial city, then Florence is a natural city. Perhaps this is what D. Merezhkovsky had in mind when he wrote: “I can’t think of anything like Florence… It is gray, dark, and very simple and necessary. Venice might not exist. And what would happen to us if there were no Florence!

Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore

Florence is a rare city among cities of this scale and significance, which can be covered with a glance from one point. The landscape of Florence, seen from San Miniato or from the heights of Fiesole, creates a unique picture: the city does not appear to be man-made, but rather natural phenomenon. Surprisingly often, describing this city, convey a sense of its landscape, even its air. The writer Pavel Muratov said that in the appearance of Florence one can feel “the harmony of a magnificent tree”, and the stones of Florence seem to be lighter than the stones of which other cities are built. Here are just two of the characteristic descriptions of Florence: “Bluish veils of air, bluish-violet mountains, Arno silver, light fog and the fragrance of violets from the mountains. Free wind, music and incense ”(Boris Zaitsev); or: “The hills breathe, the famous flowering hills. Coolness, the subtlest colors of the earth and sky and the breath of the wings of the spirit of Tuscany. Divine City! (Mikhail Osorgin). In the description - nothing man-made, only natural, but anyone who is familiar with Florence will not be able to disagree that we are talking about Florence. It is also difficult to imagine another city, whose sketches would equally organically include the themes of the “city of flowers”, “city of bats”, descriptions of “thousands and thousands of butterflies white as snow”, the cries of city donkeys or river otters basking in pairs on the sandy banks of the Arno ...

The writer Peter Vail, in one of his Italian essays, generally doubted “human participation in the appearance of Florence” - in his opinion, this is rather a phenomenon that naturally grows out of the surrounding Tuscan landscape: “If towers are trees, then cathedrals are mountains. Especially the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, and especially when you look from behind the baptistery, before your eyes five levels of the mountain range - the baptistery itself, Giotto's campanile, the facade of the cathedral, the domes of the apsides, the large dome of Brunelleschi. White-green Florentine marble - snow, moss, chalk, forest?

And Joseph Brodsky, winner of the highest Florentine literary prize "Golden Florin" (which he was no less proud of than the Nobel Prize, and which was solemnly presented to him at the Palazzo Vecchio), in his "December in Florence" (1976) wrote about Florence as a reserved city where a special type of human existence arises:

There is something really from the forest in the atmosphere of this city. This is a beautiful city where, at a certain age, you simply look away from a person and raise the gate.

In the memoirs of many Russians about Florence, the same plot is often reproduced: someone (Dostoevsky, Benois, Rozanov, Zaitsev, Muratov, Dobuzhinsky ...) sits on the steps of the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore and looks thoughtfully at the bronze doors of the Florentine Baptistery located directly in front . This is the “Gates of Paradise” by Ghiberti, a masterpiece, about which Ivan Grevs wrote as the quintessence of the magical nature of Florentine art: “You really had to live a lot among the fields, often inhale the life-giving jets of predawn air, filled with the aromas of spring, greet with your eyes the appearance of dawn, listen and listen to the song of the nightingale in order to acquire the ability to create and interpret the external world in this way ... "

Dostoevsky assured his wife that if he suddenly happened to get rich, he would certainly buy photographs of "Porta del Paradiso" (if possible, then in full size) and hang it in his office in order to always have this standard before his eyes. eternal beauty. The clue to the attraction of Russian souls to the “gates of paradise” by Ghiberti was proposed by the same Grevs: “A Russian who is not used to meeting such miracles among his poor native environment feels carried away ...”

Many of our compatriots agreed that Florence, like no other city in the world, makes us think not only about the change, but also about the continuity of human generations. Florence is the embodiment of the continuity of history, a symbol of universal human immortality. Boris Zaitsev believed that decay could not touch this city, because "some kind of imperishable, unifying idea was embodied in it and brings life." And another connoisseur and admirer of Florence, Vladimir Veidle, later added that even death itself cannot be thought of as an old woman in Florence: who overturned the torch - such as after the Greeks, in the first centuries of Christianity they saw her: a sign, the threshold of immortality ... "