An elegant facsimile edition from Trent and a sophisticated exhibition in Rome are two of the events that celebrate the third centenary of the death of Andrea Pozzo (born Trent, 1642), the renowned Jesuit architect and theoretician whose written work and artistic creations are the focus of this review’s attention. Another exhibition was held in Trent, at the Diocesan Museum, dedicated principally to painting, but is not reviewed here: Eugenio Bianchi et al., eds., Andrea Pozzo (1642–1709) (Trent: Tipografia Editrice e Temi, 2009).

The centennial celebrations began in 2009 when Pozzo’s treatise, published in Rome in two versions or installments in 1693 and 1700, was fully reproduced in facsimile for the first time (Maria Walcher Casotti curated a reprint of the first volume in 2003). The entire treatise has now been reproduced from the exemplars held in the library collection of Trent Council. The greatest attention has been paid to reproducing the feel of the original tomes. In order not to disrupt the purity of the philological approach adopted here, the accompanying essays, including the main study by Pascal Dubourg Glatigny dedicated to Andrea Pozzo and perspective architecture, are printed separately in a discrete thirty-eight-page fascicle that sits between the two facsimile volumes encased in a box as only the Italians seem still to be doing these days.

As Glatigny explains in his essay, in the first volume of 1693, Pozzo concentrated on three arguments: perspective in painting, the construction of theater scenery, and the painting of quadratura ceilings. For the exposition of the first two arguments Pozzo moved from simple to more complicated constructions, whereas for the third on quadratura he literally worked upwards from the construction of bases and pedestals to columns and capitals for the fictive architecture of his fabulous ceilings. In the second volume of 1700, Pozzo reworked all the same material to render it more straightforward and didactic, his principal aim from the outset. He added examples of his own work as models: the altar of Saint’Ignazio in the Gesù, his ceiling for the church of Saint’Ignazio in Rome, and that of the Triumph of Hercules in the Liechtenstein Palace in Vienna. In the citation and illustration of his own works Pozzo follows architects such as Palladio and Scamozzi, while in the subsequent simplification of his text Pozzo effected himself what later editors would do to Scamozzi’s treatise in order to render the text more straightforward and more like an instruction manual than a deluxe architectural treatise.

Pozzo’s treatise also figures large in the catalogue accompanying the exhibition in Rome: Elisabetta Corsi writes on the “Reception of the Treatise beyond Europe” and Ginevra Mariani on “The Copper Plates of Andrea Pozzo’s Treatise.” The latter is one of the most interesting essays in this volume for the extraordinary story it tells. Its author is the director of the “Calcoteca” of the National Institute for Graphic Arts in Rome. Two years ago, when the private owners requested an export permit for 190 copper plates with “architectural motifs,” her diligent inspection quickly revealed them to be Pozzo’s original plates for his treatise. She was thus able to save them for the Italian state by organizing their purchase by the Ministry for Cultural Patrimony in December 2008. The other essays explore a range of themes that place Pozzo within his intellectual and artistic context in late seventeenth-century Europe. Four aspects of Pozzo’s art are particularly well set out in essays by Filippo Camerota, “The Theatre of Ideas: Perspective and Mathematical Sciences in the Seventeenth Century”; Richard Bösel, “Inherited Tradition and Experimentation in Andrea Pozzo’s Architectural Culture”; Elisabeth Kieven, “Notes on the Influence of Andrea Pozzo’s Architecture”; and Andrea Spiriti, “Lombard Roots for Andrea Pozzo’s Roman Works.”

In the exhibition in Palazzo Poli, from whose façade the Trevi Fountain gushes forth, a number of these rescued plates were displayed adjacent to freshly printed pages of the treatise. In some cases, Pozzo’s related original designs in pencil, pen, and ink from the Archives of the Pontifical German College are still extant and were also displayed. Other Pozzo drawings have been identified in private collections, such as the one depicting the Colosseum owned by Valentino Martinelli that is accompanied by an autograph text on a facing page. The exhibition, and consequently also the catalogue, was arranged according to fifteen sections, beginning with Pozzo as artist and Jesuit, with the celebrated self-portrait from the church of the Gesù, his masterpiece the ceiling of the church of S. Ignazio, and his famed altar dedicated to the same saint in the church of the Gesù in Rome. The section on linear perspective and the mathematical sciences displayed a number of original optical devices from the mid-seventeenth century as well as reconstructions of others from contemporary treatises, many written by Jesuits such as Cristoforo Clavius, that set the scene for three sections dedicated to the treatise, examining the technical genesis, its dissemination, and the original plates. A further section on Pozzo’s teaching at the Accademia del Collegio Romano included a number of architectural drawings of impressive beauty by Henri Laloyau, a student of Pozzo. These drawings with their elegant colored washes in pink and yellow are testimony not only to this architect’s interest in creating new shapes for contemporary churches but also his engagement with older structures such as the Hagia Sophia, as well as his attention to the building process, as displayed here with some full-size profiles for the base of a column. These drawings came from the private Aldega collection, only a few of which have previously been published, so their exhibition was a wonderful demonstration of the generosity of the owners to make this precious material available for study by scholars. This rare chance to see a number of important examples from this group of extraordinary ground plans for Jesuit churches permitted the visitor to the exhibition to appreciate the sheer variety of invention by Jesuit architects in the second half of the seventeenth century.

Another section set out Pozzo’s practical work for the Company, including his and Laloyau’s involvement in designing the Jesuit church and college in Dubrovnik, while the sections on the false perspectives of domes and ceilings, on his sacred theaters such as those designed for the Devotion of the Forty Hours, and on his theatricalization of architecture, including his development of sacred spaces as perspective stages, focused on his celebrated dome and high altar designs and the spectacular interior of S. Francis Xavier at Mondovi. The section on the Forty Hours Devotion included two drawings from the Uffizi in Florence (246–47) that have been the subject of some interest recently because of the number of questions they raise: the elegance of execution indicates that these drawings in pen and ink and ink wash could only come from Pozzo’s hand; nevertheless the type of altars they represent would be best associated with the work of his slightly younger brother, Jacopo Antonio Pozzo (1645–1721), a Barefoot Carmelite who was the first to develop this type of innovative high altarpiece. While Jacopo Antonio had some innovative architectural ideas, he was not a great designer or illustrator, so who better for him to turn to than his much more technically accomplished brother to conjure up a pair of beautiful drawings to show to prospective clients? One can now compare the differences between the two siblings as the album of designs by Jacopo Antonio, or Giuseppe as he is often called, was recently published in its entirety by the Superintendency of Trent (F. Suomela, ed., L’album dei disegni di Giuseppe Pozzo (Beni artistici e storici del trentino, 14), Trent: Soprintendenza, 2008: 36–49), who is also responsible for the facsimile discussed here. These various initiatives, all of them assisted by funding from the Autonomous Region of Trent and Alto-Adige, exemplify how local pride combined with scientific expertise and financial assistance have enabled the city of Trent, home almost five hundred years ago to a church council that proved decisively influential for the history of the early modern period, to now also honor one of its most prominent artists of the late seicento.