Brettell was born in Rochester, New York.  When he was eight his family moved to Denver, Colorado, and spent his formative years there. He entered Yale University, intent on studying molecular biophysics until hearing professor George Kubler speak, changing his mind to study art history. Brettell received his Bachelor's and Master's, degrees from Yale. At Yale, Brettell met Zoe Caroline Bieler (b. 1950), a graduate student in cultural anthropology, who he married in 1973. He mounted his first art installation, a photography exhibition at Yale, the same year.

Museum curator at the Art Institute of Chicago; specialist in drawings, particularly Italian and French of the 17th and 18th centuries. Joachim was born in Göttingen in 1909 to Dr. Johannes Joachim, a librarian, and Else Gensel; his grandfather was the noted violinist Joseph Joachim. Joachim attended school at a classical Gymnasium in Göttingen, completing his abitur in 1927.

Author of the first American survey of ancient sculpture, archaeologist, and historian of Classical Antiquity. Mitchell, then Myers, was the daughter of Christian missionaries working in Persia. Mitchell is one of two historians of Classical Antiquity in her family. Her brother, Johny Henry Wright studied the language, culture, and art of ancient Greece.