A SPECIALIST IN RENAISSANCE ART, Diane Cole Ahl explores the varied historical and spiritual contexts in which art was created and experienced. She is the author of Benozzo Gozzoli, published by Yale University Press in 1996, the first comprehensive study in the 20th century of the work of the Italian artist known for his illustrations of 15th-century life in Florence. The book was named an Outstanding Academic Book of 1997 by CHOICE, and coawarded the 1998 Otto Grundler Prize at the International Congress of Medieval Studies.

Ahl is coeditor of Ritual, Spectacle, Image: Confraternities and the Visual Arts in Renaissance Italy (Cambridge University Press, 2000) and editor of The Cambridge Companion to Masaccio, containing essays on the influential Florentine painter of the early Renaissance, published by Cambridge University Press. Natalia Swiderska '03 of Katowice, Poland, assisted Ahl with this book. She used her advanced skills in Italian and German to do research and also contributed to the editing and proofreading process. Ahl is currently writing Italian Painting in the Fifteenth Century for Yale University Press, and a book on Fra Angelico.

A member of the Lafayette faculty since 1977, Ahl has taught 14 art history courses and one interdisciplinary First-Year Seminar, and team-taught courses in Vienna, Austria, and Florence, Italy. She has received a Fulbright Fellowship, Renaissance Society of America Fellowship, National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, and an American Philosophical Society Fellowship. She was president of the Italian Art Society.

Ahl received the Mary Louise Van Artsdalen Prize for outstanding scholarly achievement (1999), Thomas Roy and Lura Forrest Jones Award for superior teaching and contribution to her discipline (1996), Thomas Roy and Lura Forrest Jones Lecture Award (1984), and Lafayette Student Government Award for Superior Teaching (1981).