Associate Professor History of Art and Architecture
Michael Zell teaches European art and architecture of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. His specific area of research is seventeenth-century Dutch art, with a particular focus on Rembrandt. Professor Zell’s book Reframing Rembrandt: Jews and the Christian Image in Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam (University of California Press, 2002) reinterprets the significance of Rembrandt’s relations with Amsterdam’s Jews for his biblical art. He has received a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for his current book project, For the Love of Art: Rembrandt, Vermeer, and the Gift in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Culture, an examination of the role of gift exchange in Dutch art and culture of the early modern period. Professor Zell has also published numerous articles and essays on a variety of topics relating to seventeenth-century Dutch art.