MAZZONI, Guido. – Sculptor, born in Modena around 1450 and died there on 13 September 1518. He was called Paganino, after the name of an uncle, and Modanino, from 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 renowned terracotta modeller Niccolò dell'Arca, he completed in Busseto, in 1475, a Dead Christ and a Nativity for the church of the Minor Observants; around 1480, in Modena, the lively Deposition in the oratory of S. Giovanni Decollato, with painted figures; then, in Ferrara, for S. Maria della Rosa, another similar Deposition (1485); the characteristic Nativity, now in the crypt of Modena cathedral; three Pietàs: in S. Giovanni in Reggio Emilia, in S. Lorenzo in Cremona and in S. Antonio in Castello in Venice (of the latter, completed in 1489, only a few fragments remain in the Padua Museum). According to some, the rustic, typical Madonna and Child of the Pieve di Guastalla also belongs to this period. Called to Naples by Ferdinand I of Aragon, Mazzoni executed in 1491 the bronze bust of that king (now in the Naples Museum) and for Duke Alfonso of Calabria the Deposition (1494), now in the church of Monteoliveto. He then followed King Charles VIII to France, where he worked, together with Fra Giordano, in the castle of Amboise; and after the death of that sovereign (1498), he executed his bronze and enamelled tomb, with allegorical figures, later destroyed at the end of the 18th century. He was also in the service of the successor, Louis XII, and sculpted for the castle of Blois a statue of the king in hunting costume and another equestrian one in stone. After the death of Louis XII in 1514, the Modenese sculptor returned definitively the following year to his native city, laden with honours and wealth.
Far more important than his more courtly productions, such as the bust in the Naples Museum, Mazzoni is significant in the history of 15th-century sculpture for his qualities of solid and realistic plasticity, a continuator of the most lively and popular modes of Niccolò dell'Arca, but without the dramatic and fantastic impetus peculiar to the latter, and with a tendency towards poses and psychological emphasis that exclude any hint of transcendental figuration.