Historian of medieval Spanish art, founding director of the Institute of Fine Art at New York University and leading figure in bringing German art historians and their style of art history to the United States. Cook was born to William Jeremiah Cook and Jan Macreal (Cook). He attended Phillips Academy before entering Harvard University. He served in the American Expeditionary Force, 1917-19 during World War I.

Donatello and Italian Renaissance sculpture scholar. Lányi's father was Arpád Lányi, a Hungarian bureaucrat. The younger Lányi was born in Várna, Hungary, which is present-day Varín, Slovakia. He attended a humanities Gymnasium in Budapest, receiving his Abitur in 1920. Between 1920 and 1924 and again in 1927 he studied art history, archaeology and history in Vienna under the Vienna-School scholar Julius Alwin von Schlosser and then in Munich under Wilhelm Pinder.