L. Duerloo

A subject can grow on its author. When Luc Duerloo was a kid, his grandmother took him to the Marian shrine of Scherpenheuvel. Although he did not get the candy that he had earnestly prayed for, he returned from the pilgrimage with sense of having been somewhere special. Many years later, he served as curator for the exhibition Albert & Isabella, 1598-1621 at Koninklijke Musea voor Kunst en Geschiedenis in Brussels (1998). From this fresh confrontation with Scherpenheuvel and its founders resulted the book he wrote together with Marc Wingens: Scherpenheuvel: Het Jeruzalem van de Lage Landen. It deals with the creation of the pilgrimage shrine by the Archdukes and its emblematic artistic programme.

The monograph: Dynasty and Piety: Archduke Albert (1598-1621) and Habsburg Political Culture in an Age of Religious Wars is the first of its kind in English. It won the Filips van Marnix van Sint Aldegonde prize for history (2011) before it was even published.

Luc Duerloo was born (1958) and raised in Antwerp (Belgium). He earned his PhD at the University of Leuven (1986) and teaches early modern political and institutional history at the University of Antwerp. He was Hans Kohn Member of the School of Historical Studies of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton (2008) and visiting scholar of the Department of History of Columbia University (2010). His publications deal with the Habsburgs, the politics of piety and of art and with the Belgian nobility.