Eisler was born in
Hamburg, Germany, in 1931. His family subsequently moved to the United States, where Eisler received his undergraduate degree from
Yale University in 1952. He studied at
Oxford from 1952 to 1953, then completed his master's degree at
Harvard University the following year. He was hired to teach art history at Yale from 1955 to 1957 while he was working on his doctorate. Eisler received his PhD from Harvard in 1957, and spent the following year as a Fellow at the
Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. He has taught at New York University since 1958. On June 23, 1961, he married
Benita Eisler, née Blitzer (b. 1937), a literary scholar and biographer. Together, they have one daughter. His research and writing have been furthered by many grants and awards, including a
Guggenheim Fellowship, a
National Endowment for the Humanities Senior Fellowship, and a Henry Fellowship at
Magdalen College, Oxford. He was the recipient of a
festschrift for his 80th birthday in 2011, when his colleagues published
New Studies on Old Masters: Essays in Renaissance Art in Honour of Colin Eisler. ==Selected works==