Architect and historian of medieval building, noted for his assertion that Gothic architecture's system of ribbed vaulting was unnecessary for structural reasons. Abraham served as a soldier in World War I. After the war, he worked on the reconstruction of monument destroyed by the war in the north of France. He trained in the architectural studio of Pascal et Recoura at the Ecole des beaux-arts in Paris, graduating in 1920. He further studied at the l'Ecole du Louvre between 1921 and 1924.

Museum department director, print specialist and editor of the Gazette des Beaux-Arts (1956-1987); established a genre of art-historical research exploring the importance of classical culture to that of the Middle Ages. Adhémar was descended from a distinguished legal family of the French Midi (southern France). His father, a lawyer of the Cour de cassation (French Supreme Court), allowed his son to follow scholarship rather than study law.

Italianist art historian; Arasse graduated from the École normale supérieure in 1965 in Classics. He entered the Sorbonne initially studying Italian Renaissance art under André Chastel on St. Bernardino of Siena. He switched to École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) under the direction of Louis Marin.

Medievalist and educator; director of the Société français d'archéologie; and professor of the l'école de Chartes, l'école du Louvre, l'école des Beaux-Arts. Aubert's father was an architect (d. 1891). Aubert attended the Lycée Condorcet and then the École Nationale des Chartes. At the École a thesis on the Cathedral of Senlis under the Romanesque scholar Robert Charles de Lasteyrie du Saillant in 1907. Aubert joined the Department of Prints of the Bibliothèque nationale in 1909, rising to assistant librarian in the department in 1911.

His book, Manual of Oriental Antiquities (1889) was one of the early required texts to be listed in the course catalog for the art history classes of Princeton University.

Spanish art history; monograph on the Escorial.

Student of Freud and Jung; psychoanalytic interpretation of historical works of art and the creative process.

His book, L'art byzantin (1883) was one of the early required texts to be listed in the course catalog for the art history classes of Princeton University. Notes about Bayet's opinions on Giotto appear in Richard Offner's annotated catalog of the 1937 Mostra Giottesca.

Curator of paintings at the Louvre Museum, 1951-1965; historian of 19^th century French art. Bazin was the son of Charles Bazin and Jeanne Laurence Mounier-Pouthot (Bazin). He studied art history at the Sorbonne with both Henri Focillon and Émile Mâle, where he reached the baccalaureate and licentiate levels. After completing his studies at the Sorbonne, Bazin received a diploma in museology from the école du Louvre. In 1928, he joined the department of drawings at the école des Beaux Arts in Paris.

Curator of the Luxembourg Museum and first director of the Musée Rodin.

Art dealer who authored an important biographical dictionary of artists Dictionnaire critique et documentaire des peintres, sculpteurs, dessinateurs et graveurs. Following on the inspiration of Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler. In 1898, Felix Becker launched an initiative to write a comprehensive dictionary of artists, architects and decorators, the first volume of which appeared in 1907. Bénézit began a similar work in the French language shortly thereafter.

Print and book collector, wrote major inventory of prints.

Author of a pioneering study on medieval southern Italian art; professor of art history. Bertaux attended the Institut Sainte-Croix at Neuilly and the Lycée Condorcet in Paris. At the École normale supérieure, where he was a student from 1888 to 1891, he earned the degree of agrégé de lettres. After his military service he studied the art of the Italian renaissance under Eugène Müntz in Paris. In 1893 he enrolled at the École française de Rome, housed at the Palazzo Farnese.

Critic and historian of French and Italian art; chair in the history of art at the Collège de France (1878); first editor of the Gazette des beaux-arts. Originally trained as an engraver, Blanc began submitting journal articles to Bons Sens and Le Progrès in 1836. Throughout his career, he was politically active, advocating increased government support for the arts. In 1848, Blanc was appointed head of the Bureau des Beaux-Arts.

Architect and architectural historian; first to launch the controversy regarding whether Greek sculpture had been painted during ancient times. Blouet studied architecture under Pierre-Jules-Nicolas Delespine (1756-1825) at the école des Beaux-Arts, Paris in 1817. In 1821 he was awarded the Prix de Rome. In Rome, Blouet worked closely with Antoine Quatremère de Quincy, completing drawings for the restoration of ancient monuments.

Director and chief curator of the Montreal Museum of Arts. Nathalie Bondil was born in Barcelona on February 19th, 1967, and raised in Morocco. She obtained her degree in museology and art history with specializations in sculpture and 19th century to modern art from the École du Louvre in 1992, before matriculating to l’Institut national du patrimoine, a French academy that trains curators and conservators, in 1994.

Poet, literary critic and historian whose work became representative of the so-called New Art History. Bonnefoy was born to [Marius] élie Bonnefoy (1888-1936), a railroad worker, and Hélène Maury (Bonnefoy) (1889-1972), a teacher. As a child he spent summers at his grandfather's house in the southern France town of Toirac, near the River Lot. His father died when Bonnefoy was just thirteen, affecting the boy deeply. Bonnefoy graduated with honors from the Lycée Descartes in 1941, continuing study at the Université de Poitiers, 1942, in mathematics.

Architectural historian of the medieval era and professor of art, UC-Berkeley, 1962-1980. Bony was the son of Henri Bony and Marie Normand (Bony). Bony's first degree at the Sorbonne was in geography and history (Agregation d'histoire et de geographie) in 1933. As a student in art history in 1929, Bony worked under the Sorbonne's Henri Focillon, the French medievalist responsible for incorporating German methodologies into French scholarship.

Curator at the Louvre; art collector. Both de Tauzia, commonly known as Tauzia, had a Dutch grandmother, Suzanne-Marie Both, whose name, Both, was added to his father's family name. An earlier scion of the Both family, Pieter Both, was the first governor of the Dutch East Indies (1610-1614). Tauzia's father, Pierre-Paul Both de Tauzia (1778-1843) was a royalist in the service of the city of Bordeaux. Between 1828 and 1830 he was administrator of the royal lottery. Tauzia's mother was Jeanne Fayt. The young Tauzia spent his early youth in Bordeaux.

Historian of pre-Christian art; developed the idea that prehistoric objects could be measured by periods of geologic time in which they were imbedded. Boucher de Perthes was appointed the director of the customhouse at Abbeville in 1825. Like many educated people in the nineteenth century, his hobby was archaeology. He spent his spare time digging in the nearby Somme valley. By 1837, his discoveries included flint hand axes and other tools lodged in the bones of mammals known to be extinct.

Curator of the Print Room, Bibliothèque nationale. After the death of his father, in 1859, Bouchot's mother and sister moved with him to Tilleroyes, near Besançon, where he later attended the Collège Saint-François-Xavier. He served in the army during the Franco-Prussian war. In 1874 he was admitted at the École des Chartes, where he obtained the diploma of archivist-paleographer. He began, in 1879, a lifelong career at the Print room of the Bibliothèque nationale, as an intern under Henri Delaborde.

Early French photographer of art history images. He was born in Alsace, Germany, presently known as Dornach, Germany. Braun was the son of Samuel Braus, a police officer stationed in Bresançon. The family moved to Mulhouse (Alsace) in 1822 where Braun grew up. He attended the local école industrielle (he missed attending the Mulhouse design school), completing his trade schooling in Paris, settling there. Initially worked as a fabric designer, setting up his own business in 1834 with his brother.

Medievalist focusing n Byzantine and Romanesque sculpture. Method similar to Jurgis Baltrušaitis II; strong iconography; professor at l'Université de Clermont

Curator at the musée de Versailles; gave lessons on the great art collections of the 17th and 18th centuries (in the tradition of Edmond Bonnafé) and at the Ecole du Louvre. His students (though not particularly inspired by him) included Charles Sterling. He was part of a group of scholars centered around Louis-Charles-Léon Courajod, including Paul Vitry, Jean Joseph Marie Anatole Marquet de Vasselot, and Raymond Koechlin.