Professor Jakob Rosenberg (September 5, 1893 – April 7, 1980) served as Professor of Fine Arts between 1947 and 1964.

From 1919 he studied art history, first in Bern and Zurich, then in Frankfurt and Munich, where he received his doctorate in 1922 under Heinrich Wölfflin. From 1923 he worked at the Museum of Prints and Drawings (Kupferstichkabinett) in Berlin under Max J. Friedländer initially as an unpaid scientific assistant, then from 1935 as a curator.

After an initial stay at Harvard in 1936, Jakob Rosenberg emigrated to the USA in 1937, where he found accommodation at Harvard University with the help of Adolph Goldschmidt and his friend Paul J. Sachs. He became a Research Fellow and Lecturer soon after, being promoted to Associate Professor in 1940 and then Professor in 1948. In 1949, he was appointed as Curator of Prints at the Fogg Museum. In 1954 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He retired from Harvard in 1964. From 1939 he was also head of the graphic collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Rosenberg authored/co-authored nine books, including a major text on the work of Lucas Cranach, a 16th-century German artist. The Harvard University Press has published five editions of his book Rembrandt which Sydney J. Freedberg, former Porter Professor of Fine Arts, called "one of the most profound books on Rembrandt ever written."