His parents, a psychiatrist and a professor of French Literature at Yale University, were, in his words, “of the class of Americans who idealize Europe”, and as a youth he spent most of his summers in France.

[1] He attended Choate Rosemary Hall, and received his undergraduate education at Colby College in Maine, where he majored in Art History and English Literature.

After graduating, he moved to London, where he studied at the Courtauld Institute and received a Masters for his work on seventeenth century sculpture in Rome.

He subsequently attended Cambridge University, St. John's College, where he received a second Masters in History of Art, writing on Bronzino's London Allegory,[4] and began a PhD, but chose not to complete his thesis.

In the fall of 2012, he received a PhD in art history from the University of Ljubljana, with a thesis on the work of the Slovenian architect Jože Plečnik (1872–1957).

[12] His nonfiction work on the many thefts of the Ghent Altarpiece, called Stealing the Mystic Lamb, was published in October 2010 by Public Affairs.