He was the son of Francesco Andriolli, an Italian veteran of the Napoleon Bonaparte's Grande Armée, and a Polish noblewoman Petronella Gośniewska de Nowina.

Andriolli received a scholarship and in 1861 he went to Rome, where he continued his studies at the Accademia di San Luca.

There he started his career as an illustrator for various newspapers, notably the Tygodnik Illustrowany, Kłosy and Biesiada Literacka.

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.

In the later years of his life, Andriolli found refuge in a small villa he designed for himself near Anielin in what is now the town of Otwock at the Świder River, close to Warsaw.

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.