Poet, composer and author of a major symbol dictionary and co-author of Ars Hispaniae. Cirlot was the son of Juan Cirlot and Maria Laporta. After graduating from the College of the Jesuits, Barcelona, he worked as a customs agent and at the Banco Hispanoamericano. His initial interest was in music, which he studied until called as a soldier to fight against Franco in the Second Spanish Republic, 1937. With their defeat he was again mobilized by the Franco regime in 1940.

French playwright, poet, essayist and art writer. Claudel was born in Villeneuve-sur-Fère in the north of France in 1868. His father, Louis Prosper Claudel, was a petit-bourgeois registrar. His mother, Louise-Athanaïse Cerveaux (Claudel) came from a local farming family in Champagne. Claudel’s sister Camille, four years his senior, would go on to achieve widespread acclaim as sculptor. Although the family was Roman Catholic, they were not particularly devout. Claudel was educated privately in Champagne before the family moved to Paris around 1882.

Curator, art critic, art historian, and educator. Enwezor was born as the youngest son of an Igbo family in Calabar, Nigeria. During the Biafran war of 1967-1970, he and his family were forced to move to the city of Enugu, Nigeria. In 1982, after finishing a semester at the University of Nigeria, Enwezor moved to the Bronx, in New York. In 1987 he earned a B.A. in political sciences at Jersey City State College, now New Jersey City University.

Writer of a dictionary of Dutch and Flemish artists; art and book dealer; publisher and poet. Immerzeel was the third son of Johannes Immerzeel, a merchant in food, and Elizabet Steenbus. In his youth, Immerzeel studied drawing and painting with Pieter Hofman (1755-1837), but he had to give up this vocation because of his weak eyes. A self-educated man, he spoke several languages and dedicated himself to music and poetry. In 1795, he served as secretary to the court martial of Dordrecht.

Poet, art critic and prolific art-book writer. Lucie-Smith was the son of a British civil servant assigned to Jamaica, John Dudley Lucie-Smith (d. 1941) and Mary Frances Lushington (Lucie-Smith). His forbears had been some of the first white settlers in colonizing the island in 1627. Raised in the privileged environment of the white colonial class, his father died when he was eight years old. He and his mother moved to England in 1946. In 1949 Lucie-Smith received a scholarship to Merton College, Oxford University, still only seventeen.

Chief curator of the Brussels Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique (Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium); professor of art history; poet and novelist. Roberts-Jones belonged to a family of British descent. His father, Robert Roberts-Jones, was a lawyer. The young Philippe attended high school in Uccle (near Brussels) at the Athénée communal. In 1943, after his graduation, his father, who had joined the Resistance during World War II, was executed by the Nazis. Philippe entered the British army as liaison officer.

Painter, poet and writer on art. Bell was the seventh child of Robert Scott and Ross Bell (Scott). His four eldest brothers died in an 1807 epidemic. Bell himself was educated at the Trustees' Academy in Edinburgh, learning engraving, and publishing Views of Loch Katrine and Adjacent Scenery before he was twenty. Though he never attended college, Bell convinced the Board of Trade in 1837 to offer him the founding headmastership in the Government School of Design in London.

Author of influential 16th-century artists' biographies; painter, poet, and playwright. His parents, Cornelis van Mander and Johanna van der Beke, belonged to the rural nobility. Van Mander attended the Latin school in Tielt, along with his elder brother, Cornelis. They both continued their education with a French schoolmaster in Ghent. In 1566-1567, Van Mander studied with the painter and poet Lucas d'Heere (1534-1584) in the same city and subsequently, in 1568-69, with the painter Pieter Vlerick (1539-1581) in Kortrijk and Doornik.

Doctor; poet; archaologist; historian of Portuguese art; archival reasearch; standard source for Portuguese art history.