Piero Boccardo earned a degree in Art History from the University of Genoa, furthered his studies at the Universidad Autónoma in Madrid and the Musée du Louvre, and gained his doctorate with a thesis on collecting among the Genoese aristocracy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Former director of the Musei di Strada Nuova in Genoa, is now  today Superintendent of the collections of the Municipality of Genoa. He has curated various exhibitions, among them Van Dyck a Genova (1997), L’Età di Rubens (2004), The Agony and the Ecstasy: Guido Reni’s Saint Sebastians (2007) and A Superb Baroque: Art in Genoa, 1600–1750 (2020). He is the author of studies such as Andrea Doria e le arti (1988) and I Grandi disegni italiani del Gabinetto disegni e stampe di Palazzo Rosso (1999).