Irina Sokolova (Habilitation 2006, St Petersburg State University), is Curator of Dutch painting at the State Hermitage Museum. She has published exhibition catalogues and articles on Dutch seventeenth-century paintings in Russia, amongst the most recent 'Het portret van Samuel Maresius in de Collectie van de Hermitage' in Face Book (Primavera 2012). She is presently working on a catalogue of seventeenth-century Dutch masters in the Hermitage.