Pierre Francastel (8 June 1900 – 2 January 1970) was a French art historian, best known for his use of sociological method.
He worked in building conservation at Versailles while undertaking research toward his doctoral degree, which was on the sculpture of Versailles, and in 1928 he published a monograph, including a critical catalogue, on the seventeenth-century French sculptor François Girardon.
In 1948, he was created inaugural Professor of the Sociology of Art at the École pratique des hautes études in Paris.
[1] Francastel's research interests varied between the French seventeenth century and the nineteenth century, but his sociological methodology, strongly influenced by the work of Émile Durkheim, remained the intellectual basis upon which his scholarly thought and corpus were organised.
Yve Alain Bois, "Foreword", to Francastel's Art & Technology in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (trans.