Giuseppe Mazzuoli

Giuseppe Mazzuoli was an Italian sculptor working in Rome in the Bernini-derived Baroque style. He produced many highly accomplished sculptures of up to monumental scale but was never a leading figure in the Roman art world.

Mazzuoli was born in Volterra and trained in Siena but spent his most of his adult working life in Rome. There, he entered the workshop of Ercole Ferrata where he became the only pupil of Melchiorre Cafà who also worked with Ferrata. Like Ferrata, Mazzuoli was frequently drawn on by Gian Lorenzo Bernini to assist with large commissions. He was among the co-workers who cooperated in Bernini's Tomb of Pope Alexander VII (1672-78).

When late in 1702 Pope Clement XI and Benedetto Cardinal Pamphili announced their grand scheme for twelve over life-size sculptures of the Apostles to fill the niches along the nave of the Basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano, the project was divided among all the premier sculptors of Rome. Each statue was to be sponsored by an illustrious prince, and Mazzuoli was assigned the statue of Saint Philip, financed by the Bishop of Würzburg and finished in 1711. Like most sculptors, Mazzuolli was provided with a sketch by Clement's favourite painter, Carlo Maratta, which he was to follow. Robert Cahn observed "When Saint Philip is compared with other apostles in the series, it is clear that the somewhat old-fashioned, Berniniesque style manifested in Mazzuoli's single assignment was losing appeal."

Mazzuoli carried out some major commissions for the Order of Malta, most noticeably the main altar of St. John's Co-Cathedral in Valletta, finished in 1703. There, he created a marble group of the Baptism of Christ which might on the one hand have been influenced by Cafà's undocumented and abandoned designs from 1666, and it is certainly strongly dependent on a small baptism group by Alessandro Algardi.

In the same church, he produced in his later years allegorical figures for the tomb of Ramon Perellos y Roccaful (died 1720), Grand Master of the Order of Malta.

His brother, Annibale Mazzuoli, was a painter. His son, also a sculptor, is generally distinguished as 'Giuseppe Mazzuoli the younger.

Text courtesy of Wikipedia, 2024