POZZO, ANDREA. — Born in Trento in 1642, after an initial education in painting there and in Como he moved to Milan, where in 1665 he entered the Society of Jesus as a “coadjutor brother” and not as a “father.” He was in Genoa, perhaps in Venice, in Mondovì, Turin, and Rome—summoned there in 1681 by the superior general G. P. Oliva—and everywhere left extensive evidence of his activity as an architect, sculptor, and painter (frescoes in the Jesuit churches of Genoa, Mondovì, and Turin); summoned to Vienna in 1702 by Emperor Leopold, he died there in 1709.
A theorist of perspective (to him belongs a celebrated treatise on Perspectiva pictorum et architectorum, published in Latin and Italian from 1693 to 1702, in 2 volumes, dedicated to Emperor Leopold II and furnished with 220 engraved plates), he applied the geometric rules proper to the linear perspective of the Renaissance in order to create the most daring spatial “illusionism.” As a skilled perspective artist, he used fictitious architectural forms, skilfully diminishing according to the rules of optics, to simulate enormous spaces, already in the dome of the Jesuit church at Mondovì (1679) and in the altars of the church of the Gesù at Frascati; and a closely knit structure of fictitious architecture in perspective is the fundamental means by which he achieved the illusory vastness of the prestigious vault (after 1685; sketch in the Galleria naz. d’arte antica in Rome) in the church of S. Ignazio in Rome, undoubtedly his masterpiece: in the vast space so skilfully suggested, he casts countless foreshortened figures that plunge towards the earth or rise towards the luminous sky at the centre of the composition, where s. Ignazio appears in glory amid a flight of angels.
The illusionistic apparatus, which derives from the immediate precedent of Pietro da Cortona’s Barberini ceiling in multiplying perspective motifs and “inventions,” aims, with the aid of this “fictitious” reality, to transport the spectator’s mind and spirit easily towards the Most High, whose power is to be exalted through the gradual contemplation of the triumph of the Catholic faith
over evil in the world. This programmatic intention is clearly expressed in the words with which the painter comments on fig. 100 of vol. I of his treatise: “My idea in this painting was to represent the works of s. Ignatius and of the Society of Jesus in spreading the Christian faith throughout the world.” In the same church of S. Ignazio, P. is also responsible for the frescoes in the tribune, the pendentives, and the vault of the right chapel of the transept, in addition to the fictitious dome which, damaged in 1891, was subsequently covered pending restoration. Among the first works of the Roman period are the frescoes (1681–85) on the ceiling and walls of the vestibule of the rooms of s. Ignatius. P. also worked in Rome as an architect: he supplied the design for the chapel of S. Luigi in S. Ignazio and designed (c. 1695–1700) the splendid chapel of S. Ignazio in the left transept of the Gesù; he later designed other altars for S. Sebastiano in Verona and for S. Maria delle Grazie near Arco, while the interior of the church of the Gesù at Montepulciano was renovated according to his design. Among the decorative works, there should also be recalled, together with the fictitious domes of the church of S. Ignazio in Rome and of the Gesù at Frascati, that of the abbey at Arezzo (1703), the Church of the University in Vienna (1703–1705), and the rich architectural perspectives of the Liechtenstein Palace in Vienna. In Austria, P.’s art helped to disseminate the methods of our most imaginative seventeenth-century architects, such as Borromini and Guarini, while the play of his perspective illusionism was destined to characterize the great pictorial decoration of eighteenth-century Austria.
P.’s activity as an easel painter was much more limited: it will suffice to recall the altarpiece with s. Francesco Borgia in the first altar on the left in the Gesù in Rome and the Autoritratto in the Uffizi, his best-known canvas, in which the rather muted colour, lacking warm tonalities, seems to contrast with the opinion of those who would have P. educated on Venetian models. — Vedi tav. CXXVII.