Born 1957. Studied art history, classical archaeology, Italian philology, and theater studies at universities in Munich, Florence, and Frankfurt. 1985 doctorate from the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University of Frankfurt am Main. 1983–1986 associate researcher at the Institute of Art History of the University of Frankfurt. 1986–1988 fellow of the Max Planck Society at the Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome, then assistant researcher in the Department of Art History at the University of Bonn, 1994 habilitation there. 1993 interim professor in the Department of Art History at the University of Hamburg. 1993–1994 senior research fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. 1994–1997 professor of modern art history in the Department of Art History of the Friedrich Schiller University Jena. 1997–2003 holder of the professorship of art history at the RWTH Aachen. 1997 fellow at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts. 1998 scholar at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. 2000 Clark Visiting Professor in the graduate program of Williams College in Williamstown. 2003–2009 tenured professor of early modern art history at the University of Basel. 2009–2014 director of the German Center for Art History 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 in February 2014 as a full professor of art history.

Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung in 2021.

Since 2014 Speaker of the international research network Bilderfahrzeuge. Aby Warburg's Legacy and the Future of Iconology; President of the Scientific Commission of the Swiss Institute for Art Studies SIK/ISEA (Zurich); Member of the Board of Trustees of the Gerda Henkel Foundation (Düsseldorf); Member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the International Research Centre for Cultural Studies/IFK Vienna; as well as other commissions and advisory boards. Since 2021: Swiss representative 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 Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the Süddeutsche Zeitung and other newspapers.

His research focuses on the art and architecture of the modern era and the German classical period, political iconology, methodology and the history of scholarship.