In The Russian Passion for Dutch Painting of the Golden Age, Irina Sokolova presents the collection of paintings created by Pyotr Petrovich Semenov-Tyan-Shansky (1827-1914), an outstanding scholar and Russian statesman during the era of liberal reforms in Russia. Not only did this man of great erudition assemble a unique body of more than 700 works by Dutch and Flemish masters, but he pushed hard to ensure that it entered the Imperial Hermitage in 1914. His activities as a collector have until recently remained largely unknown. For the first time in English, this richly illustrated...