Gabriele Finaldi, who holds a doctorate in Art History from the Courtauld Institute of Art, is director of the National Gallery, where he held the post of curator of Spanish and Italian painting (1992-2002). Until 2015 he was deputy director for Collections and Research at the Museo Nacional del Prado, where he performed crucial work in reorganising the collections, restoration policy, temporary exhibitions, research projects and publications. He has written many studies on Spanish and Italian painting of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and has curated major exhibitions on Zurbarán, Spanish still-life painting, seventeenth-century Genovese painting and the Carracci.