*1957 Studied art history, classical archaeology, Italian philology and theatre studies at the universities of Munich, Florence and Frankfurt am Main. 1985 Doctorate at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt am Main. 1983-1986 Research assistant at the Institute of Art History at the University of Frankfurt am Main. 1986-1988 Max-Planck- Gesellschaft scholarship holder at the Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome, then university assistant at the Institute for Art History at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn, where he completed his habilitation in 1994.

1993 Deputy professor at the Department of Art History at the University of Hamburg. 1994-1997 Professor of Modern Art History at the Art History Department of Friedrich Schiller University Jena. 1997-2003 Professor of Art History at RWTH Aachen University. 2003-2009 Professor of Early Modern Art History at the University of Basel. 2009-2014 Director of the German Forum for Art History/Centre Allemand d'Histoire de l'Art in Paris. He renounced a second mandate as well as the call to the post of founding director of the Institut d'études avancées de Paris and returned to the University of Basel as full professor of art history in February 2014. He retired at the end of January 2025.

1993 to 1994 Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.; 1997 Fellow at the Clark Art Institute Williamstown, Mass.; 1998 Scholar at the Research Institute for the Arts and the Humanities of the Getty Center in Los Angeles; 2000 Clark Visiting Professor in the Graduate Programme of Williams College, Williamstown (Mass.); 2023 Senior Fellow at the Italian Academy of Columbia University, New York.

In 2021 he was elected to the German Academy for Language and Literature.

From 2014-2023 speaker of the international research network Bilderfahrzeuge.Aby Warburg's Legacy and the Future of Iconology; from 2009-2024 President of the Scientific Commission of the Swiss Institute for Art Research SIK/ISEA (Zurich); member and Deputy Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Gerda Henkel Foundation (Düsseldorf); Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board of the International Research Centre for Cultural Studies/IFK Vienna; member of other commissions and advisory boards. Since 2021: Representative of Switzerland in the Comité International d'Histoire de l'Art.

From 1995 to 2000 Andreas Beyer was president of the Rudolf Borchardt Society, from 1999-2014 co-editor of the Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte. He is a regular contributor to the arts sections of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the Süddeutsche Zeitung and other newspapers.

His research focusses on the art and architecture of modern times and German classicism, political iconology, methodology and the history of science.