Émile Mâle

Émile Mâle was a French art historian, one of the first to study medieval, mostly sacral French art and the influence of eastern European iconography thereon. He was a member of the Académie Française, and a director of the Académie de France à Rome. Mâle was born in Commentry, Auvergne. A pupil at the École normale supérieure, he received his degree in 1886. He taught rhetoric at Saint-Étienne, then at the University of Toulouse.