Xavier Bray completed his PhD at Trinity College Dublin, and is currently the director of the Wallace Collection. Formerly chief curator of the Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao and Dulwich Picture Gallery, he was also assistant curator of Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-century European paintings at the National Gallery, London, where he has curated several exhibitions, including The Sacred Made Real: Spanish Sculpture and Painting 1600–1700 (2009) and Goya: The Portraits (2015).