Mazzoni, Guido

MAZZONI, GUIDO. - Sculptor, b. in Modena around 1450 and d. there on 13 Sept. 1518. He was called il Paganino, from the name of an uncle, and Modanino, from his native city. He began his career making masks for pantomimes and religious mystery plays and directing public festivities at the Este court.

Under the clear 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, in Ferrara, for S. Maria della Rosa, another similar Deposition (1485); the characteristic Nativity, now in the crypt of the cathedral of Modena; three Pietàs: at S. Giovanni in Reggio Emilia, at S. Lorenzo in Cremona and at S. Antonio di Castello in Venice (of the last, completed in 1489, only a few fragments survive in the Museum of Padua). According to some, the typical, rustic Madonna with the Child of the Pieve di Guastalla would also belong to the same period. Summoned to Naples by Ferdinand I of Aragon, M. there executed in 1491 the bronze bust of that king (now in the Museum of Naples) and for the duke Alfonso of Calabria the Deposition (1494), currently in the church of Monteoliveto. He then followed King Charles VIII to France, where he worked, together with fra' Giocondo, in the castle of Amboise; then, at the death of that sovereign (1498), he executed his tomb in enamelled bronze, 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 dress, and another equestrian one, in stone. After the death of Louis XII in 1514, the sculptor from Modena returned definitively, 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. assumes importance in the history of 15th-century sculpture for his qualities as a solid and realistic modeller, a continuer of the liveliest and most popular manners of Niccolò dell'Arca, but without the dramatic and fantastic impetus peculiar to the latter, and with a tendency toward poses and psychological emphases that exclude the breath of a figurative transcendence.

Alberto Neppi