Daniel Arass

Daniel Arasse was a French art and cultural historian, theorist of visuality, and specialist in the Italian Renaissance.

He was born in Algiers. He graduated from the École Normale Supérieure. He began work on a dissertation on Italian Renaissance art at the Sorbonne under the supervision of André Chastel, but changed the subject and supervisor, defending his thesis under Louis Marin at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences. He taught the history of art from the 15th to the 19th century at the Sorbonne (1969–1993). From 1971 to 1973, he was a member of the research institute of the French School in Rome; from 1982 to 1989, he headed the French Institute in Florence. Since 1993, he was head of a research program at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris.

He translated Frances Yates’s The Art of Memory (1975, reissued 1987).

He died of ALS, but continued working until his final days.