This book is unusual in every way. It combines a scientifically-reasoned catalogue, biographies of artists and a living history of what is considered one of the best private collections of art of the 15th–17th centuries in Europe, supplemented by sections of Ancient Egypt, Ancient China, Greece and Rome. The fabric of the narrative includes literary portraits of art historians, restorers, artists, architects, writers who interacted with the collection over a 150-year history. Founded in the 1860s by the artist of the Office of the Imperial Theaters, entrepreneur I.E. Grinev, the collection is still being replenished by him grandson - Russian avant-garde painter Eli Belyutin. Museums in Italy, the USA, Japan, Poland, and Lithuania are waiting for it to be shown, but by the will of the collection’s compilers, it must first become an independent state museum as the property of Russia.