Hans Vlieghe (1939) studied art history at the University of Ghent, where he also worked as an assistant for several years. He obtained his doctorate there in 1967 on the work of the seventeenth-century Brussels painter Gaspar De Crayer, Munich, London, Florence and Rome, he joined what is today the Centrum Rubenianum in Antwerp as a research assistant. Hans Vlieghe is now a member of the centre's editorial board and heads the publication of the Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard. Since 1990, he has also been a member of the Royal Flemish Academy of Science and the Arts.