Mazzoni, Guido (c. 1450-1518)

Italian sculptor. Born at Modena, Mazzoni worked there and at Ferrara, Venice, Naples, and France, specializing in dramatic and realistic Nativity and Lamentation scenes. In 1495 he travelled with Charles VIII from Naples to France and helped to popularize recent Italian styles there. Much of the realism in these works was achieved through the use of masks taken from the living and the dead.

In 1498 he worked on a monument to Charles VIII in the abbey of St Denis (destroyed in 1793) and later executed an equestrian statue of Louis XII at Blois. Subsequently he was approached by Henry VIII of England to design a monument for Henry VII in Westminster Abbey, a project which was later undertaken by Pietro Torrigiano.