Andrea Pozzo is the Italian painter famous for the trompe-l'œil ceiling frescoes in Rome's Church of Sant'Ignazio. His illusionistic decoration, created mainly between 1685 and 1694, makes the church's flat ceiling appear to open into a monumental vaulted space filled with architecture, saints, and heavenly figures.
Pozzo was a Jesuit brother, painter, architect, stage designer, and leading Baroque expert in perspective. He used quadratura, a technique that extends painted architecture into real space. Viewers were meant to stand at a marked point in the nave, where the perspective alignment produces the most convincing illusion.
The church's planned dome had never been completed, partly because of disputes with its donors. Pozzo solved the problem visually: instead of constructing a dome, he painted an illusion of one. The celebrated ceiling scene depicts the Apotheosis of Saint Ignatius, founder of the Jesuits.
A common mix-up is with Giovanni Battista Gaulli, who decorated the nearby Jesuit church of Il Gesù. Mantegna and Correggio also created famous illusionistic ceilings, but Sant'Ignazio is Pozzo's signature achievement.