Pallavicini Monument

The transition from seventeenth-century Baroque to the more graceful forms of the Rococo took place essentially without upheavals, prepared by artists who aimed at a taste midway between the various artistic personalities of their time and the controversies they fomented. Such was Mazzuoli, who with graceful elegance refined the language of Bernini and of Algardi together. A moderating personality, then, who could count above all on the resources of an impeccable craft and left all theoretical disputes aside. In fact the well-meaning intention of tempering Bernini's impetuous language with Algardi's classicising inflections inevitably led to a noble academicism, eclectic by its very underlying approach. Nevertheless, the formal results of the current headed by Mazzuoli, regardless of their specific aesthetic merit, are of considerable importance because they are the obvious premise of so much eighteenth-century sculpture, especially in the provinces.