Michael W. Kwakkelstein is Professor of Art History, specialized in the visual arts and art theory of the Renaissance in Italy. He received his doctoral degree from the University of Leiden with a thesis entitled: Leonardo da Vinci as a physiognomist. Theory and drawing practice (Primavera Press, Leiden 1994, second rev. ed. Leiden 2014). His research is focused on the relation between art theory and artistic practice. His findings (with particular emphasis on Leonardo da Vinci) have been published in the Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Print Quarterly, Apollo, Gazette-des-Beaux-Arts, Artibus et Historiae en Letteratura & arte. In 1998 he published an annotated edition of the first Dutch treatise on the art of drawing by Willem Goeree (Inleydinge Tot de Al-ghemeene Teycken-Konst/Introduction to the Art of Drawing, Middelburg 1668). Between 1999 and 2003 he was affiliated to the Dutch University Institute for Art History in Florence as a Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) Postdoctotal Research Fellow. Following a two-year position as Lecturer at the Institute for Art History of the University of Amsterdam, he became Chief Curator of the Department of Fine Arts of Teylers Museum in Haarlem and in collaboration with the British Museum and the Ashmolean Museum curated the successful exhibition of Michelangelo drawings. In 2006 he returned to Florence to teach courses in art history at the International Studies Institute (ISI) at Palazzo Rucellai. Since 2008 he is the director of the Dutch University Institute for Art History in Florence. He appears regularly on Dutch television and radio broadcasts to comment on exhibtions and recent discoveries regarding Leonardo da Vinci. For Teylers Museum, Haarlem, he curated the exhibition Leonardo da Vinci. The Language of Faces (Teylers Museum, Haarlem, 5 October 2018-6 January 2019). Early 2022 he completed a volume on the anatomical drawings by Rubens for the Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard. He is a member of The Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities and honorary member of the Florentine Accademia delle Arti del Disegno. Meer weten.