Michał Elwiro Andriolli
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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 or 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.
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.
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- (Polish) Gabriela Socha (1988). Andriolli i rozwój drzeworytu w Polsce. Lwów-Wrocław: Ossolineum, 277. ISBN 8304026856.
- (Polish)Janina Wiercińska (1981). Andriolli; opowieść biograficzna. Warsaw: Ludowa Spółdzielnia Wydawnicza. ISBN 8320532159.
- (Polish)Michał Elwiro Andriolli. Władysława Jaworska, Janina Wiercińska: Andriolli - świadek swoich czasów; listy i wspomnienia. Wrocław-Warsaw: Polish Academy of Sciences, Ossolineum, 429.
