Andrea Kibler Maxwell

Andrea is a PhD candidate in the History of Art and Architecture with a specialization in Italian Renaissance art and theology.  Her research focuses on fifteenth- and sixteenth-century painting and religious discourse in Lombardy and the Veneto region.  Specifically, her dissertation seeks to reunite the intense local history of Northern Italy with its geographical location during the theological debates of the reformations.  She explores the visual exegesis and discourse regarding anti-Semitism, Protestant heretics, and witches, as well as interrogates what it meant for art in this period to be considered “modern.”  By examining the work of artists such as Girolamo Romanino and Lorenzo Lotto, Andrea’s research realigns geography, theology, and local history in a way that allocates agency to both the artists and communities for whom the art was created and will show how, within a matter of years, the same imagery and tropes carried drastically different meanings for the region in which it was used.

Andrea joined the History of Art and Architecture Department in 2015 with a background in both art history and clinical psychology.  For her master’s thesis in art history, Andrea examined the relationship between biblical hermeneutics, medieval sermons, and the Brancacci Chapel in Florence.  In 2017, she received a Dietrich grant that allowed her to drive coast to coast in the United States visiting Kress European Art Collections in twenty-six different art repositories.