Michał Elwiro Andriolli
Michał Elwiro Andriolli (
1836-
1893) was a
Polish painter and architect. He is notable for his illustrations to
Mickiewicz's
Pan Tadeusz, as well as for his autorship of a distinctive style of villas built outside Warsaw.
Andriolli was born
November 2 of
November 14 (sources differ) of
1836 in
Wilno (modern Vilnius), to a family of an Italian emigrant, a veteran of the
Napoleon Bonaparte's
Grande Armee. In
1855 he went to
Moscow, where he started his studies at the School of Painting and Sculpture. In
1858 he graduated from the Imperial Academy of Art in Petersburg. Upon his return to Poland, Andriolli received a scholarship and in
1861 he went to
Rome, where he continued his studies at the
Academia San Luca. He returned to Poland and took part in the
January Uprising against
Imperial Russia. Arrested by the tsarist authorities, he managed to escape from prison and reach
London and then
Paris.
|
Andriolli's illustration to Pan Tadeusz |
An emissary of the
Committee of Polish Emigration, he returned to Russian-held Poland, but was again arrested in
1866. Tried for his part in the Uprising, he was sentenced to
katorga in
Vyatka. Pardoned in
1871, Andriolli returned to Poland and settled in
Warsaw. There he started his career as an illustrator for various newspapers, notably the
Tygodnik Ilustrowany,
Kłosy and
Biesiada Literacka. His work for various Warsaw-based newspapers made him one of the most renown illustration makers of the time and Andriolli was hired to illustrate some of the classic works of the
Polish literature, notably the works by
Adam Mickiewicz,
Juliusz Słowacki and
Ignacy Kraszewski. His pictures for the first editions of Mickiewicz's
Pan Tadeusz and
Konrad Wallenrod prepared between
1879 and
1882 are regarded as icons of Polish literature even now. Between
1883 and
1886 he lived in Paris, where he worked on illustrating the French language editions of works by
Shakespeare and
James Fenimore Cooper. Upon his return he also prepared frescoes in several churches, notably in
Kaunas.
In late years of his life he found refuge in a small villa he designed for himself near
Anielin at the
Świder River, close to Warsaw in what is now the town of
Otwock. Apart from his own house, he designed several other villas in the area, creating a distinctive architectural style of Warsaw's suburbs. The
świdermajer, as it was later dubbed by
Konstanty Ildefons Gałczyński, was an eclectic mixture of traditional
Mazovian village wooden architecture with Alpine and Siberian styles. It remains a distinctive feature of many of Warsaw's suburbs. Michał Andriolli died
August 23,
1893 in
Nałęczów and is buried at the local cemetery.
# # #
*
Andriolli's illustrations to Pan Tadeusz*
Andriolli's illustrations to Stara Baśń* http://www.otwock.pl/default.asp?ID=33
* http://www.republika.pl/biblioteka_piotrkow/warsztat/2004/3/040302.htm
