He is also noted for the architectural plans of Ljubljana Cathedral (1700), inspired by the designs of the Jesuit churches Il Gesù and S. Ignazio in Rome.

After three years he came under the guidance of another unidentified painter from the workshop of Andrea Sacchi who appears to have taught him the techniques of Roman High Baroque.

[1] In 1668, he was assigned to the Casa Professa of San Fidele in Milan, where his festival decorations in honour of Francis Borgia recently canonised (1671) met general approval.

In this church one can already see his later illusionistic techniques: fake gilding, bronze-coloured statues, marbled columns and a trompe-l'œil dome on a flat ceiling, peopled with foreshortened figures in architectural settings.

His masterpiece, the illusory perspectives in frescoes of the dome,[3] the apse and the ceiling of Rome's Jesuit church of Sant'Ignazio were painted between 1685–1694 and are emblematic of the dramatic conceits of High Roman Baroque.

The painting, 17 m in diameter, is devised to make an observer, looking from a spot marked by a metal plate set into the floor of the nave,[4] seem to see a lofty vaulted roof decorated by statues, while in fact the ceiling is flat.

The painting celebrates the apostolic goals of Jesuit missionaries, eager to expand the reach of Roman Catholicism in other continents.

For example, rather than placing the usual evangelists or scholarly pillars of doctrine in the pendentives, Pozzo depicted the victorious warriors of the old testament: Judith and Holofernes; David and Goliath; Jael and Sisera; and Samson and the Philistines.

By the skilful use of linear perspective, light, and shade, he made the great barrel-vault of the nave of the church into an idealized aula from which is seen the reception of St. Ignatius into the opened heavens.

The attention to movement within a large canvas with deep perspective in the scene, including a heavenly assembly whirling above, and the presence space-enlarging illusory architecture offered an example which was copied in several Italian, Austrian, German and Central European churches of the Jesuit order.

In 1695 he was given the prestigious commission, after winning a competition against Sebastiano Cipriani and Giovanni Battista Origone, for an altar in the St. Ignatius chapel in the left transept of the Church of the Gesù.

It was the coordinated work of more than 100 sculptors and craftsmen, among them Pierre Legros, Bernardino Ludovisi, Il Lorenzone and Jean-Baptiste Théodon.

In 1697 he was asked to build similar Baroque altars with scenes from the life of St Ignatius in the apse of the Sant'Ignazio church in Rome.

In 1681 he was asked by Cosimo III de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany to paint his self-portrait for the ducal collection (now in the Uffizi in Florence).

He also painted scenes from the life of St Stanislaus Kostka in the saint's rooms of the Jesuit novitiate of Sant'Andrea al Quirinale in Rome.

In 1694 Andrea Pozzo had explained his illusory techniques in a letter to Anton Florian, Prince of Liechtenstein and ambassador of Emperor Leopold I to the Papal Court in Rome.

[7] Pozzo published his artistic ideas in a noted theoretical work, entitled Perspectiva pictorum et architectorum (2 volumes, 1693, 1698) illustrated with 118 engravings, dedicated to emperor Leopold I.

The work was one of the earliest manuals on perspective for artists and architects and went into many editions, even into the 19th century, and has been translated from the original Latin and Italian into numerous languages such as French, German, English and, Chinese thanks to Pozzo's Jesuit connection.