Robert A. Maxwell (Ph.D., Yale; A.B. Princeton) teaches the art of the Middle Ages, specializing in the sculpture, architecture, and manuscripts of the Romanesque and Early Gothic periods, while also pursuing an interest in medieval art's historiography.

His research has concerned problems of word & image (Art Bulletin), the 18th-century reception of medieval art (Art History), sculptural provenance (Bulletin monumental), Romanesque architecture and the “workshop” model (Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians), as well as essays on sculpture and historiography in catalogues and collected volumes. Forthcoming articles include studies of pilgrimage architecture and urban organization; the ethnicity of Romanesque art; Aquitainian illumination; and the temporality of dreams in 12th-century illuminated manuscripts.

His first book,The Art of Medieval Urbanism: Parthenay in Romanesque Aquitaine (2007), considers the role of monumental sculpture and architecture in defining the Romanesque cityscape. He is also completing a book on the pictorial invention of sacred and secular histories in illuminated historical manuscripts (e.g., chronicles, cartularies). Professor Maxwell has also collaborated with several Philadelphia museums, serving as consulting curator to an exhibition of incunabula for the Rosenbach Museum & Library, and as a contributor to the installation of Romanesque sculpture and Gothic stained glass for the Glencairn Museum.