

Giuseppe Maria Mazza initially trained as a painter under Domenico Maria Canuti and Giovanni Gioseffo del Sole. He appears to have made the transition to sculpture under the latter's tutelage, and, in circa 1670, moved to Venice for a year where he burnished his reputation as a stucco worker. The arrival of John Adam Andreas, Prince of Liechtenstein, in Bologna in 1692 marked an important turning point in the sculptor's career as he was asked to complete a number of over life-size marble busts, which remain in the Princely Collections, Vaduz. Mazza established his reputation as the foremost Bolognese sculptor of his generation with his now destroyed Madonna of the Mystery of the Rosary for Bologna's church of Corpus Domini (1693). His greatest works are the series of bronze reliefs illustrating the life of the Bolognese St Dominic for the church of SS Giovanni e Paolo, Venice (circa 1717-1720), which exhibit the sculptor's characteristic classicising, tempered, late Baroque style.