Andrea Pozzo was born in Trento on 30th November 1642, and died in Vienna on 31st August 1709. He was an extraordinary architect, decorator painter, theorist of arts and an important character of the late Baroque. There are many variants of his surname, as it usually happened, because the identification was based upon the owning to a family (Del, Dal) or upon the plural form of the surname itself (Pozzi). The legend of a Germanic origin of his name – Brunner - has not a documental base. He started school in Trento, then he continued in Venice, where he got in touch with painting. We have not any explicit reference about the masters of his training period. Anyhow, we can see from his artistic production that he availed himself of the best artistic sensibility sources. This artist’s life is similar to many other artists’ life chronicles: many activities while frequently moving from one town to another in Northern Italy, according to his jobs.
In 1695 he moves to Milan, where, at St. Fidelio’s Church, he enters the Society of Jesus, and since this moment his artistic production is tied up to the glories of this Society: he did not choose the priestly life (he did not become a “Father”), but preferred to remain a “Brother” according to the ancient monastic life that Saint Ignatius from Loyola continued in the Society. In Milan he could improve his artistic preparation by helping the successors of FRANCESCO MARIA RICHINI, the famous architect of the “Fabbrica del Duomo”.
In Liguria he worked in Genoa, in St. Ambrose’s Church, where he made an Immaculate and St. Francesco Borgia, then in the Collegiate Church in Novi Ligure, where we find one of his Predication by St. Francesco Saverio, and then in Sanremo. He went back again to Milan and then he returned to Turin after demand of the Court to decorate the Jesuit Church of the St. Martyrs. In 1676 at Mondovì he had been frescoing for two years St. Frances Saverio’s Church, called afterwards The Church of the Mission. He moved to Modena where he frescoed the vault of the presbytery and the Choir in St. Bartholomew’s Church. In these works – especially the last one – we can taste all the intuitions of his figurative and perspective vision, the extravagances and the daring that characterized his important production, and that find their best expression during the roman period. We can also find other traces of his hand in some works kept in Arezzo, Montepulciano and Como, where he worked for some occasional periods.
In 1681 he was asked to go to Rome by the Chief of the Society, Gian Paolo Oliva, under suggestion of the painter Carlo Maratta, who was working in Rome during those years. The goal of this calling was to complete the frescoes of the corridor of “Casa Professa”, a work left incomplete by the painter Borgognone. Andrea Pozzo stayed in Rome nearly twenty years, up to 1702; he improved his representative technique and created some great masterpieces.
We can say that his most demanding job was to carry out the frescoes on the ceiling in St. Ignatius’ Church; this works is the achievement of his never-ending quest for perspective, and represents his artistic maturity: on the barrel vault of the church he obtained some architectural images that opens the visual bonds and frame the most expressive icon of the missionary spirit of the Jesuits family. For this same church he projected the altar dedicated to St. Louis Gonzaga, while in the Jesus’ Church he made the high altar and the one dedicated to the founder Saint. His roman masterpieces have been influencing for a long time the style of the inner decoration in the European Catholic churches of the late Baroque. Just before starting to work in St. Ignatius, he frescoed the Church of Jesus in Frascati, by using the technique of the pictorial fiction, with painted altars and altar-pieces. In 1694 he was appointed to fresco the refectory in the Monastery of the Holy Heart at Trinità dei Monti; the main subject will be the Glory of the Trinity with St. Frances, St. Paul and St. Frances from Sales.
The decorations for St. Ignatius’s Church is linked to the story of the Church itself, wanted by Family Ludovisi, Pope Gregorio XV since 1621 to 1623 as an ex-pupil of the Collegio Romano and nephew of the CARDINAL Ludovico Ludovisi, who intended to continue the project of his uncle. In effect in 1629 he started to allocate the necessary funds. In 1632 he died though still young. In the following years there were some economic problems and doubts about the political celebration of the family, but in 1640 the centenary of the birth of the Society of Jesus gave the impulse to overstep these problems and reach the decision to make different heights between the nave and the aisles, and a front with pilasters and Corinthians capitals, while on he tympanum stands out the Ludovisi coat of arms. In 1649 the church was terminated, but the problem of the cupola forced the senior Grassi to a discussion with the main architects of the period: Girolamo Rainaldi, Alessandro Algardi, Francesco Borromini and Gian Lorenzo Bernini. In 1685 Andrea Pozzo proposed to put on the cross-vault a cupola only painted on a veil (17 metres diameter). The great vault of Glory of St. Ignatius was inaugurated in 1794 and the decoration went on until 1701. The consecration was celebrated in 1722 by Cardinal Anton Felice Zonadari-Chigi.
During his staying in Rome the artist picks up the fruits of his hard studies about perspective, that make him one of the best architects of his time. A famous work of his is the Perspectiva pictorum et architectorum, written between 1693 and 1698 and published in two volumes. An Italian version, Prospettiva de’ pittori a architetti (Rome 1693, 1700) was translated and published in London (1707) and Augusta (1708, 1711). In this treatise he gave the instruction for painting architectural perspective and ensembles. In this same treatise, dedicated to Leopold I of Austria and accompanied by 220 boards engraved by Marcantonio Franceschini, there are also two projects for the front of the Basilica of St. John in Laterano. This was one of the first manuals about perspective for artists and architects, and was published many times in different editions, even in XIX Century; it was translated from Latin and Italian into many languages, such as French, German, English and – thanks to the Jesuits – into Chinese.
In 1700 he made the project for the Cathedral of Ljubljana dedicated to St. Nicolas. At the beginning of the XVIII Century he went to Wien after an invitation of Leopold I, and he worked for him, his court, the prince Johann Adam von Liechtenstein and many religious orders and churches. Every now and then he made decorations (sceneries for churches and theatres) but these works were early destroyed. In 1703 he painted the false cupola in the Jesuits’ Church. His main work in Wien was the monumental fresco on the ceiling of the Palace of Liechtenstein, a Triumph of Hercules, very appreciated by his contemporaries. There still remain some of his paintings for Viennese altars (Jesuits’ Church in Wien). His composition of altar and illusory frescoes of the ceilings have been very appreciated and copied in Hungary, Bohemia, Moravia and Poland.
Agostino Temporelli
Andrea Pozzo was born in Trento on 30th November 1642, and died in Vienna on 31st August 1709. He was an extraordinary architect, decorator painter, theorist of arts and an important character of the late Baroque. There are many variants of his surname, as it usually happened, because the identification was based upon the owning to a family (Del, Dal) or upon the plural form of the surname itself (Pozzi). The legend of a Germanic origin of his name – Brunner - has not a documental base. He started school in Trento, then he continued in Venice, where he got in touch with painting. We have not any explicit reference about the masters of his training period. Anyhow, we can see from his artistic production that he availed himself of the best artistic sensibility sources. This artist’s life is similar to many other artists’ life chronicles: many activities while frequently moving from one town to another in Northern Italy, according to his jobs.
