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Giambattista Della Volpe was born 1435 in Vicenza, Italy and died 1515 Russia of unspecified causes.





Giambattista Della Volpe was an Italian adventurer in Russian during the XVI century. In Russia he was known under the name of Ivan Fryazin (Russian: Иван Фрязин), Fryazin being a distortion of the name Francesco, and was the Old Russian name for people coming from Southern Europe, mainly Italians. He was the uncle of Antonio Girardi, known in Russia as Anton Fryazin (Russian: Антон Фрязин).

Giambattista Della Volpe was of noble origin, from the Italian city of Vicenza, Around 1455 he left Italy, going to Eastern Europe. He first visited the Tatars, then went to Moscow where he converted to Orthodoxy and entered the service of Grand Duke Ivan III. Eventually he became the mint master of the Grand Duchy of Moscow, being in charge of producing the duchy's coins.

In 1469 Giambattista Della Volpe was sent to the Rome to negotiate the marriage of Ivan III with Sofia Palaiologina. He participated in the following negotiations and in 1472 returned to Rome where he represented Grand Duke Ivan III in the proxy marriage ceremony held by Pope Paul II on June 1, 1472.

He thereafter conducted the voyage of the princess Sofia Palaiologina, leaving Rome on June 24 and arriving in Moscow on November 12, 1472.

In a dispute about permission papal legate Anthony Bonumbre come to Moscow in the previous Holy Cross, Volpe ardently defended the interests of Catholics. Even earlier, by his nephew, Antonio Gilardi, who was returning from Moscow, Volpe suggested that the Venetian] government an alliance with the Tatars of the Golden Horde] on the Turks in the amount of 200 thousand horsemen. The Senate accepted the proposal and sent to the Tatars (in Russia), his secretary, Giambattista Trevisan in 1471. In Moscow, however, Volpe somehow concealed from the Grand duke this mission Trevisan and gave him for his nephew, by profession a merchant, hoping to quietly hold it to the Horde. With the arrival of Sofia Palaeologus (in Russian sources - even before) opened a fraud. Angered by Ivan III imprisoned Della Volpe in Kolomna, his goods were confiscated, and his wife and children were sent home to Italy. Trevisan almost paid with his head, being sentenced to death and pardoned only at the interverntion of Sofia Palaiologina. Only after relations with the Venetian government, when it emerged that an embassy to the Tartars does not involve the nature of a hostile Russia, Trevisan was released to the Khan Ahmat. The subsequent fate of Della Volpe is unknown.


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