MAZZONI, GUIDO. — Sculptor, born in Modena around 1450 and died there on 13 September 1518. He was called Paganino, after an uncle, and Modanino, after his native city. He began his career by making masks for pantomimes and religious mysteries and directing public festivities at the Este court.
Under the evident influence of the distinguished terracotta modeller Niccolò dell’Arca, he completed at Busseto, in 1475, a Dead Christ and a Nativity for the church of the Observant Friars; around 1480, in Modena, the lively Deposition in the oratory of S. Giovanni Decollato, with painted figures; then, at Ferrara, for S. Maria della Rosa, another similar Deposition (1485); the characteristic Nativity, now in the crypt of Modena cathedral; and three Pietà: at S. Giovanni in Reggio Emilia, S. Lorenzo in Cremona, and S. Antonio di Castello in Venice (of the last, completed in 1489, only some fragments remain in the Museum of Padua). According to some, the typical rustic Madonna and Child in the Pieve of Guastalla also belongs to this period. Summoned to Naples by Ferdinando I d’Aragona, M. executed there in 1491 the bronze bust of that king (now in the Museum of Naples), and for Duke Alfonso of Calabria the Deposition (1494), now in the church of Monteoliveto. He then followed King Carlo VIII to France, where he worked, together with fra' Giocondo, at the castle of Amboise; subsequently, upon the death of that sovereign (1498), he executed his tomb in enamelled bronze, with allegorical figures, which was later destroyed at the end of the eighteenth century. He was also in the service of his successor, Luigi XII, and sculpted for the castle of Blois a statue of the king in hunting costume, and another, equestrian, in stone. After
Luigi XII died in 1514, the Modenese sculptor returned permanently the following year to his native city, laden with honours and riches. Far more than for his courtly productions, such as the bust in the Museum of Naples, M. is important in the history of fifteenth-century sculpture for his qualities as a solid and realistic modeller, a continuator of Niccolò dell’Arca’s liveliest and most popular manner, but without the dramatic and fantastical impetus peculiar to the latter, and with a tendency toward poses and psychological accentuations that exclude the breath of a figurative transcendence.