Master of the Tomb of Mastino II

Nobody signed the two great stone horsemen of the Scaliger lords, so the sculptor who carved them is known only by a borrowed name. It comes from the tomb of Mastino II della Scala, one of the family monuments beside the church of Santa Maria Antica in Verona. The Castelvecchio museum gives him both equestrian statues, Cangrande's and Mastino's, and its own guide adds that other parts of those tombs come from the same hand.

Some scholars have tried to give him a real name. In 1971 the Veronese art historian Gian Lorenzo Mellini proposed Giovanni di Rigino, a notary who also worked as a master stonemason. The trouble lies in the evidence. Giovanni's only signed works are a statue of Saint Proculus in a Verona church, inscribed with the date 1392, and a badly damaged capital, both decades later than the Scaliger horsemen. The historian Ettore Napione, who has studied the tombs closely, has argued against the identification, and the museum keeps the anonymous name.