Piero Scanziani was a writer fascinated by dogs and found this blue brindle italian dog in a dog show in the 1940s. It was a type of dog that he believed to be the legendary extinct Molossus quoted by Columella and other writers. They were the same type of dog recovered by Caielli and Monti but they were not yet numerous. Scanziani started breeding the breed and calling it Molosso or Molosso Italiano. Guaglione was the first dog acquired by Scanziani and was the patriarch of the Molosso. Scanziani wrote about the Molosso publicizing the breed and enabling its formalization and recognition by the Italian Kennel Club in the same decade. The first breed standard cited the names Cane Corso, and mastino and cane da presa as synonyms to the Molosso. In subsequent years the new breed adopted only the Mastino Napoletano name and acquired different physical traits through the decades that separated it from its old synonyms.
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