Jessica Maier

she/her

  • Professor of Art History
Jessica Maier

Jessica Maier teaches European Renaissance art and architecture in a global context. In her research and in the classroom, she focuses on traditionally overlooked categories of imagery such as prints, illustrated books, maps, and city views, to provide new insight into a period of extraordinary cultural activity.

Maier holds degrees from Columbia and Brown Universities and has been awarded prestigious fellowships from the American Academy in Rome, Harvard University’s Villa I Tatti in Florence, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Her articles have appeared in benchmark journals such as The Art Bulletin and Renaissance Quarterly, and she has published two books to date: Rome Measured and Imagined: Early Modern Maps of the Eternal City (University of Chicago Press, 2015) and The Eternal City: A History of Rome in Maps (University of Chicago Press, 2020). Her third book, Contested Places: Cartography, Conflict, and the Visual Arts in Early Modern Europe, is currently nearing completion.

At Mount Holyoke since 2011, Maier teaches a wide range of classes open to majors and non-majors alike, including introductory surveys, lecture courses on the art and architecture of Renaissance cities, and advanced seminars on Leonardo da Vinci, Rome, and other topics. 

Areas of Expertise

visual culture of early modern Italy, including cartography and print culture as well as art and architecture

Education

  • Ph.D., M.Phil., M.A., Columbia University
  • B.A., Brown University

Happening at Mount Holyoke

Recent Campus News

As Mount Holyoke marks the one hundred fiftieth year of the teaching of art history, its Department of Art History and Architectural Studies is celebrating its long history and is working to ensure it evolves to meet the changing nature of the field.

Mount Holyoke Associate Professor of Art History Jessica Maier has received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Recent Grants

Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) for the project 'Contested Places: Cartography, Conflict, and the Visual Arts in Early Modern Europe.' The project is for one year. (2020)

Recent Publications

Maier, J. (2022). Print Culture, Cartography, and Breaking News: Mapping the Great Siege of Malta. Renaissance Quarterly, 75 (2), 459-507.

Maier, J. (2020). The Eternal City: A History of Rome in Maps. University of Chicago Press.  

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