Guido Mazzoni (sculptor)

It seems probable that Mazzoni's background in theatrical masks and props affected his work, because of the staged melodrama in their gestures and expressions.

In the more prestigious artistic centre of Florence the Della Robbia family became famous for their distinctive blue and white tin-glazed terracotta work, which was highly skillfully made yet provided relatively cheap decoration.

He soon attracted the attention of the outside world, when in 1489 he was asked by the aforementioned Alfonso of Aragon, brother-in law to Ercole, to carry out some work in Naples.

[5] Guido was entrusted with the kneeling lifesize figure of the king and accompanying angels[6] for Charles VIII's tomb at the royal abbey of St-Denis, destroyed during the French Revolution.

Guido and his French workshop have been recognized with more and less certainty in other funereal works of personages connected with the court: the figures of Philippe de Commines, historian of Charles' expedition, and his wife, Hélène de Chambes, removed from the Grands-Augustins to the Louvre Museum reveal Mazzoni's dramatic realism through a workshop execution;[8] the Dormition of the Virgin for the Abbaie de la Trinité, Fécamp, is attributed to Mazzoni with the aid of his studio;[9] In 1509 a document records a payment to Mazzoni for sculpted medallions all'antique for the Château de Gaillon, built by Cardinal Georges d'Amboise, the faithful friend and councillor of Louis XII of France.

Ultimately, Mazzoni was a highly important artist of his period, both in terms of the skill of his art and the historical significance of his life.