Bruegel specialist; Curator Cabinet des Estampes, Bibliothèque royale de Belgique. René van Bastelaer was the son of Désiré Alexandre Henri van Bastelaer (1823-1907), a distinguished pharmacist, chemist, and archaeologist. His mother was Elisa van der Spiecke. Van Bastelaer obtained his BA degree from the Faculty of Arts of the Catholic University of Louvain. Rather than continuing his studies he trained in the studio of the history painter Antoine Van Hammée (1836-1903). Van Bastelaer was particularly attracted to engraving.

Rubens scholar and director of the Rubenshuis. Baudouin studied during World War II. After the liberation of Belgium he assisted between 1946 and 1948 in the repatriation of artworks stolen by the Nazis. He worked as a research assistant at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam where he met the scholars Ludwig Burchard and Roger-Adolf d'Hulst. A delegation of Antwerp city officials visiting the museum in 1949, including the Burgomeister Lode Craeybeckx (1897-1976), noticed his activities and invited him back to his native Belgium.

Curator Musée royal des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, in Brussels; maecenas. Bautier was the son of Edmond Bautier and Marie Querton. After having attended the Athénée royal at Ixelles, near Brussels, he studied law and history at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. From this university he earned the degree of doctor in law and the degree of doctor in philosophy and letters. He enrolled at the Brussels Bar, but he soon left the practice of law. He instead chose a career in art history. In 1907 he was among the founders of the Société des Amis des Musées royaux de l'État in Brussels.

Medievalist; professor of philosophy. He was born in Ypres, Belgium or in Dutch Leper, Belgium. De Bruyne attended high school at the St.-Vincentiuscollege in Ypres. In 1915, when the Germans attacked Ypres in World War I, the family fled to Sées in France (Orne). Here De Bruyne continued his high school education. In September 1916 he joined the Belgian army. After the war De Bruyne enrolled at Louvain University to study philosophy while still serving in the army. After having earned his Bachelor's degree, in 1919, he entered the Benedictine abbey, Regina Coeli, in Louvain.

Egyptologist; Chief Curator of the Brussels Royal Museums of Art and History. In 1898, Capart finished his study of Law at the Free University of Brussels. He won an award for his thesis on Egyptian penal law, Droit pénal égyptien, and an abridged version of it was published in Revue de l'Université de Bruxelles (1899-1900). For further training in Egyptology, Capart attended the lessons of Alfred Wiedemann (1856-1936) at Bonn University and also visited other universities.

Antiquarian; organized important early exhibion on the van Eyck. Casier was the son of Désiré Casier (1824-1815), joint owner of a textile company, Casier Frères, and Henriette Le Grand (1825-1899). He was raised in a conservative Roman Catholic home, tutored by his parents and parish priest. He attended the Ghent Sint Barbara College and then entered the Collège Notre-Dame de la Paix, Namur where he graduated in 1870. Casier was awarded a Doctor of Rights (law degree) at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, in 1873. His interest, however, was never in law.

Director of the Royal Institute for the Study and Conservation of Belgium's Artistic Heritage, in Brussels. Coremans studied at the Free University of Brussels (Faculty of Sciences). In 1932, he obtained his doctorate in analytical chemistry with a dissertation: Sur le déplacement des électrolytes adsorbés.

Curator of ancient decorative arts at the Royal Museums of Art and History in Brussels. Crick studied art history and archaeology with Marcel Laurent at the university of Liège. In 1919, she obtained her doctoral degree with a dissertation on Romanesque art in the valley of the Meuse river. After her studies, she created the catalogs of the drawings (1919) and the engravings (1920) in the collections of the city of Liège. In 1920, she published a monograph on the drawings of Lambert Lombard, who lived in Liège between 1505 and 1566.

student of Germain Bazin at l'Université libre de Bruxelles; Renaissance; Roman art; influence of the paintings of the Domus Aurea on Renaissance images and ornament

Chief curator Musées royaux d'Art et d'Histoire/Koninklijke musea voor Kunst en Geschiedenis, Brussels. De Borchgrave was the son of Frédéric de Borchgrave d'Altena (1864-1932) and Marie-Clémentine Blanckart (1869-1960). The family lived in the castle of Lexhy in Horion-Hozémont, near Liège. De Borchgrave earned his doctoral degree in archaeology and art history at the University of Liège under Marcel Laurent. In 1924 he joined in Brussels the Musées royaux d'Art et d'Histoire, directed by Jean Capart.

Connoisseur of illuminated manuscripts; assistant curator at the Department of Manuscripts of the Royal Library in Brussels. He was born in Herseaux, Belgium. which is present day Herzele. Delaissé attended high school at Tournai, Belgium, and studied Romance Philology at the Catholic University of Louvain. During World War II, when Belgium was under German occupation, Delaissé joined the resistance and later fled to Spain, where he was arrested. He subsequently escaped to England, where he trained in the tank corps for the Belgian Army of Liberation.

Curator; professor of art history; novelist. Delen attended the Koninklijk Atheneum (high school) in Antwerp, where he befriended Alfons de Ridder (1882-1960), later known as the Flemish writer Willem Elsschot. Delen continued his education in economics at the Antwerp Hoger Handelsinstituut, and in art history at the Hoger Instituut voor Kunstgeschiedenis en Oudheidkunde in Brussels. He also attended the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp. He was interested in the contemporary art scene and visited the studios of the painters Walter Vaes (1882-1958) and Richard Baseleer (1867-1951).

Curator Brussels Royal Museums of Art and History; archaeologist. Destrée attended high school at the Collège de Bellevue in Dinant. He received a BA in philosophy and letters at the Facultés Universitaires Notre-Dame de la Paix in Namur, Belgium, and he studied law at the Catholic University of Louvain. After a break of several years he returned to Louvain where he enrolled in the Faculty of philosophy and letters. One of his professors, Canon Edmond Reusens (1831-1903) encouraged him to participate in a seminar of archaeology at the University of Bonn in Germany.

Art critic, author of monograph on Van der Weyden; lawyer; politician of the socialist party, minister. Destrée was the eldest son of Olivier Destrée (1834-1899), an engineer, and Clémentine-Jeanne Defontaine (1836-1876). He attended high school at the Collège de Charleroi, Charleroi, Belgium, and studied law at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, from which university he earned his doctoral degree in law in 1883. In 1886 he joined the Bar of Advocates of Charleroi. At the same time he was attracted to the literary movement and he became a collaborator to La Jeune Belgique.

Specialist in sculpture, particularly of the Meuse River Valley; curator of sculpture at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts in Brussels. Devigne studied art history and archaeology at the University of Liège, in Belgium. When she obtained her doctoral degree in 1912, she was the first female doctor in art history in Belgium. Her dissertation, on medieval art in the Meuse River Valley, was granted from the University of Liège with Marcel Laurent as her dissertation supervisor. In Paris, she studied with André Michel at the école du Louvre.

Specialist in Early Netherlandish Painting; inspector of the Art Patrimony of the province of East Flanders. Elisabeth Dhanens studied art history at the Hoger Instituut voor Kunstgeschiedenis en Oudheidkunde of the Ghent Rijksuniversiteit (State University). In 1945, she obtained her doctor's degree with a monograph on the artist and designer Jan van Roome, who worked in the first quarter of the sixteenth century in the Southern Netherlands.

Art historian; archival researcher: Erik Duverger was the son of historian and art historian, Jozef Duverger, and a Hungarian mother, Terez Belazy. The young Duverger was raised in his birthplace. After graduation from high school at Ghent Sint-Pauluscollege, he studied art history and archaeology at Ghent University, where his father had been professor since 1949. In his father's footsteps, Erik specialized in the study of textile arts, particularly Flemish tapestry. Beginning in 1956, he contributed articles regularly in the periodical Artes Textiles.

Professor of Art History at Ghent. Duverger attended high school in his birthplace and studied history at the Catholic University of Louvain, where he obtained his doctoral degree in 1923. In 1924, he became a teacher at the Royal Atheneum in Ghent. He held this position for more than 20 years.

Anarchist and scholar of Florentine Renaissance art. Dwelshauvers studied classics and medicine at the university in Brussels. He continued medical study in Bologna. He published important anarchist pamphlets, Le movement anarchiste in 1895 and in 1901 Le mariage libre. As an anarchist, he hated militarism and the political authority of the church. In 1897 he returned to Belgium where he met anarchist and geographer Elisée Reclus. He returned to Florence to receive his medical degree, but never practiced.

professor at the University of Brussels; founder of the journal, Maisons d'hier et d'aujourd'hui; architectural history

Curator Koninklijke Musea voor Kunst en Geschiedenis/Musées Royaux d'Art et d'Histoire in Brussels (KMKG/MRAH). Jean Helbig was the son of Edmond Helbig (1854-1896) and Marguerite Van der Laat. He was a grandnephew of the painter and art historian Jules Helbig. After having attended high school in Antwerp, Jean Helbig obtained his BA in philology and literature at the University of Brussels. He served in the army during the First World War.

Neo-gothic revivalist; painter and art historian. Jules Helbig was the son of the banker Jean-Baptist Helbig (1781-1852) and Anne-Marie Lauteren (1790-?), both from Mainz, Germany. The young Helbig was born in Liège, Belgium, where his father had settled in 1804. After the death of his mother, Helbig grew up in the castle of Breuberg (Darmstadt-Hessen), where his uncle served as a steward. At age thirteen Helbig returned to his birthplace in Belgium.

Specialist and professor in early Flemish painting. After having attended high school (Koninklijk Atheneum) in Ghent, Hulin studied at the State University of Ghent, where he received his first doctorate from the Faculty of Arts in 1883, and his second one from the Faculty of Law in 1886. He continued his academic education abroad, in Berlin, Strasbourg, and Paris. During his stay in Paris, in 1888-1889, he studied at the Collège de France, the École des Hautes-Études and the École libre des Sciences Politiques.

Rubens and Jordaens scholar: professsor of art history at the University of Ghent, 1957-1985. d'Hulst worked as a curator at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels begiining in 1949.  He received a Ph.D. in art history from the University of Ghent in 1955, writing his dissertation on Jacob Jordaens's drawings, De tekeningen van Jakob Jordaens: bijdrage tot de geschiedenis van de XVIIe-eeuwse kunst in de Zuidelijke Nederlanden. He joined the University beginning in 1957, teaching art history.

Chief curator Bibliothèque royale de Belgique; professor of art history; art critic lithographer. Hymans' father was a medical doctor, who moved from the Northern Netherlands to Brussels, shortly before Belgium became independent (1830), and later to Antwerp, where the young Hymans was born. His mother was Sophie Hymans, née Josephs. She gave the young Hymans his first art initiation in the Antwerp museums. While attending high school, Hymans took drawing classes with Edward Dujardin (1817-1889) at the Antwerp Academy of Fine Arts.