Andrea Pozzo Biography

Andrea dal Pozzo was a famous Italian Jesuit painter, architect, stage designer and art theoretician of the late seventeenth century. He is noted for expounding the art of illusionist mural paintings of the Baroque era. Pozzo specialized in ‘quadratura’and ‘di sotto in su’ techniques; i.e. a system of perspective where the focal lines start from the corner and meet each other at the center of the piece (the vanishing point). This system gave the paintings a three-dimensional appearance. This marvelous baroque artist was responsible for the ceiling fresco paintings in Il Gesu and S. Ignazio, two major Jesuit churches in Rome. Several painters emulated his style in a number of Jesuit churches across Austria, Germany and Italy. Pozzo was an advocate of ‘Gesamtkunst’ or the ‘Total Art’. Most of his compositions are based on Catholic and Jesuit themes. However, he also seems to be indebted to the theatre; many of his paintings show the religious figures as actors positioned against traditional stage devices like a curtain and a proscenium arch. He collected his creative ideas on art in the theoretical treatise ‘Perspectiva Pictorum et Architechtorum’. Pozzo is not extensively studied, but his innovations regarding perspective is a major influence on modern design.