Elena Scammacca Del Murgo is the author whose non‑fiction has the charm of narrative. Just released, in two languages, her book
“Following Russian tracks in Rome”. We speak to the author about this literary work in order to find out what it is all about and how it has been created.
Elena, your book is full of historical and cultural fascination. What sources did you use to carry out the research necessary for this demanding writing?
Perhaps you will not believe me, but to write this book of mine, I made use of the memories of real, concrete people who had inhabited the villas and palaces I described. Obviously I could not avoid such sources as the web, historical archives, etc.
How would you define the genre of this work?
I would define it it is a historical guide to Rome.
In your opinion, being noble is rather a blessing or a heavy cross? A gift or a punishment?
Being aristocratic by origin is, first of all, a great responsibility! One must behave accordingly without allowing oneself to do what others do. For example, one must constantly keep one’s emotions under control. It is not easy at all.
Do you believe in destiny, in the concept that “everything is already written and cannot be changed”, or, according to you, is each person the architect of their own fate?
I am a believer, therefore, in my view, there is certainly something to which we are predestined, but God always gives us a choice. Each of us can also choose our own path alone, but if we make a mistake, it will be our personal responsibility.
How many waves would you identify in Russian emigration to Italy and which of these waves do you feel closest to?
As is known, in Russian emigration one can identify several waves. The first follows the October Revolution, the second occurs in the post‑World War II period, the third covers the 1960‑80s and concerns dissidents, the fourth emigration takes place in the 1990s, and it is the economic one. I, however, study only the first of all these waves.
Have you ever studied the opposite phenomenon: the emigration of Italians to Russia?
It has not happened to me. However, not a little has been written about it even without me. Italians began to arrive in Russia for work as early as the 15th century, during the reign of Ivan III, actively engaging as architects, engineers, craftsmen. It is universally known that the Kremlin in Moscow was built by Aloisio Nuovo and Aristotle Fioravanti. At the court of Empress Catherine the Great there was the Italian architect Giacomo Quarenghi. The Russians have favored archaeological excavations in Italy. Is this a fact known to Italian and international archaeologists?
Art and archaeology are not the fields in which I have specialized. I am a literary woman, writer, translator and researcher of the first wave of Russian emigration to Italy.
As a representative of the nobility, do you maintain relations with nobles of countries outside Russia and Italy?
Thanks to my husband’s family, the barons Scammacca Del Murgo, and to the famous house of the black Roman aristocracy of the dukes Caffarelli to which my husband’s mother belonged, I am in contact only with Italian aristocrats.
Where and when do you meet with other nobles and what is at the centre of your discussions?
Italian aristocrats attend noble assemblies that are closed clubs. They exist in every large Italian city and bear different names. They are men’s clubs whose members, for a lady, can be the husband, brother, etc. The wife is considered an attachment to the husband (laughs). In Rome there are two similar clubs: the Hunting Circle in Palazzo Borghese and the Chess Circle in Palazzo Altieri. People go there to talk, play cards, gossip, discuss the hottest news and, of course, eat well (laughs).
In your historical research are you guided exclusively by your own enthusiasm? Do you feel the interest of the states (Russia and Italy)? Do they participate in the research at least at the level of granting patronage?
I have been dealing with literature for a long time and I do it professionally. I have no other occupations. I write and then publish my books at my modest expense. Without external support, alas. I have already published twelve books and I hope not to stop here. The latest work entitled “Sulle orme russe di Roma” has become for me a road, in the literal sense of the term (laughs). But it was worth it. The book has 450 pages and numerous illustrations. I hope to sell the entire print run as soon as possible. It is not very large, by the way, considering the cost of publication itself!
What is the attitude of readers from various countries towards your research?
They read me only in Russia. But I really hope to find a publishing house in Rome as well because the Italian text of the work already exists.
What role have Russian nobles played in the development of Italian art?
Among them there were many collectors and painters. I would like to mention, first of all, Semen S. Lazarev‑Abamelec who gathered, at the eponymous villa, a remarkable collection of artworks. Also Grigorij Stroganov, a well‑known collector in Rome, assembled a collection of works from various periods. He was a true expert of classical art to whom many turned for competent appraisal. Elizaveta Sheremeteva, née Martynova, sister of Nikolay Martynov, murderer of Mikhail Lermontov, created, in her large Roman villa, an extraordinary collection, and she herself was a talented painter. In 1843, this Russian aristocrat became an honorary academician and professor at the Florence Academy of Fine Arts. Another representative of the Russian high society, Princess Nadezhda D. Shakhovskaya in Helbig, was gifted with artistic talent and left, in her famous Villa Lante, her numerous watercolours. Not to mention Princess Zenaide Volkonskaya and many others! If we talk, instead, about the earlier period, that is, the time of Russian scholarship painters, we notice a great interpenetration of Italian and Russian arts that influenced each other!
For those of our readers who have not yet read your works, tell us a bit about the history of the Ludolf family.
It is a very long discourse! It is not possible to recount the dynasty of Neapolitan diplomats, the Ludolf counts, originally from Erfurt, in brief. There were, among them, outstanding representatives! And it is a strange coincidence that all of them began their diplomatic careers in Constantinople. One of the first representatives of this dynasty was Heinrich Wilhelm Ludolf, a man of letters. After his visit to Moscow in 1693 and the reception by Peter the Great, he published the very first guide to Russian conversations in Latin, later edited in Oxford in 1696. The author sent the first copies of the guide to the Russian emperor Peter the Great and to his teacher, Prince Petr B. Golitsyn. Another Ludolf, Count Guglielmo Costantino, knew well the Russian Empress Catherine the Great. Marrying for the second time, he educated an illegitimate son of the Russian diplomat and statesman Viktor O. Kochubey! His son, Giuseppe Costantino Ludolf, was the ambassador of the Kingdom of Naples to Saint Petersburg from 1828 to 1832. He earned great respect from Emperor Nicholas I. He even named his son Nicholas, in honour of the emperor. He knew Pushkin, with whom he celebrated New Year’s, founded a musical society together with Russian aristocrats, etc. His sister Carolina married the famous Russian diplomat Gustav O. Stackelberg. Following the line of the barons von Meiendorf, the Ludolf counts are relatives of the first foreign minister of the new Russia, Georgij Cicerin!
What has struck you most in the history of the nobility and in History with a capital H?
Let’s talk rather about the book “Sulle orme russe di Roma”. Until now Italians and Russians knew only the villa of Zenaide Volkonskaya, Villa Abamelec‑Lazarev, the palace of Maria Chernysheva and Villa Lante of Nadezhda Shakhovskaya. I managed to find new residences of Russian aristocrats in Rome that belonged to them and of which no one had known anything until now! These are true historical discoveries! I mean the palace of the Golitsyn princes, the palace of Princess Maria Rosa Radzvill, two palaces, the small and the large, of Count Grigorij Stroganov, the villa of Count Lev Bobrinskij, great‑grandson of Catherine the Great, the villa of Elizaveta Sheremeteva, the villa of Colonel Andrej Kvitka, the villa of Xenia Polyakova‑Levi, sister of the Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova, and of her husband, Baron Georgij Levi Delle Trezze, the villa of the Weinstein house of Russian and Jewish origin, and, finally, the Villa Aliotti of the great Princess Olga K. Romanova, Queen of the Hellenes, which, alas, no longer exists today because after its sale the building of the German embassy in the Vatican was built on its foundations.
In your opinion, now that most nations are democracies and not monarchies, what is the role (or perhaps the mission) of noble families?
It seems to me that their mission lies in preserving the genetic memory of their houses and safeguarding the history of their families for new generations! Without the past, no nation can have a future!
As an author, what are you working on at the moment?
I have just finished a work that required a lot of time and effort! But I already have an idea for a new book!
Thanking Elena Scammacca Del Murgo for her availability, we invite our readers to get to know her works of literature and discover the relationships that have always existed between Italian and Russian nobles. (link to books published in Italian or indications where they can be purchased online or in bookstores)
Olga Matsyna
