Diana Scultori (Mantua, c.1547 - Rome, 1612) was the daughter of a Mantuan printmaker and sculptor, Giovanni Mantovano. She was trained as an engraver by her father. However, as a woman she was denied access to training in drawing, and as a consequence relied on the drawings of other artists, including her husband, to draw from for the purpose of her engravings.
In 1575 Scultori married architect Francesco Capriani (Francesco da Volterra). Their move to Rome was the beginning of her artistic career, as noted in Vasari's Lives Scultori applied for a papal privilege upon arriving in Rome in 1576 to protect her intellectual property and to promote her works and engravings, in pursuit of architectural commissions for her husband.
It was unusual at the time for a woman to pursue a public career in a trade like engraving and, although as a woman Scultori was not allowed to participate in the act of commerce, she was able to engrave publicly and assist her husband to earn an income. Nevertheless she was allowed to sign her full name on all her works and to protect the income sought from her work by controlling distribution of her prints, as obtained by the papal privilege in 1576. Besides officially recognising Scultori's intellectual property, it made it a punishable offence for any other person to reproduce her engravings without her permission.
Scultori's signature, inscriptions and dedications were an important aspect of her engravings, with detailed text displayed along the bottom of each work. She was aware of her role as a female artist, signing her full name on her engravings as artist and entrepreneur. Her block letter inscriptions, dedications and text emphasised the legal status of her work that gave her prints a sense of importance and prestige amongst the Mantuan and Roman nobility.
Scultori was the name attributed to her brother Adamo (after 1577 in Rome), her father and also to Diana, but she never used it. In a way Scultori assumed the role of the family name as we know it today, rather than one of provenance, as was Diana Mantovana and Diana Volterra (upon becoming an honorary citizen of Volterra after her husband, she signed her works 'Diana Mantuana, Civis Volaterana', after 1579, dedicating her work to the city of Volterra).
Very few in the way of original prints created by Scultori are known; only her reproductions. In Mantua she reproduced works by Giulio Romano, and in Rome she reinterpreted drawings and paintings by artists associated with her husband's architectural commissions and the papal workshops.
Scultori was widowed in 1594 and remarried at the age of 49 in November 1596 (another architect, Giulio Pelosi, 20 years her junior).
Three known portraits of Scultori exist. One is an engraving by Cherubino Alberti, another a drawing by Frederico Zuccari. Scultori has over 75 engravings attributed to her and she became very well known in her own right. The last dated and signed engraving was in 1588 and she produced no new works before her death in 1612.
The role of reproductive printmaking gave Scultori the flexibility to pursue a career that reflected the changes and development of Italian society at the end of the 16th century.
References and further reading
Evelyn Lincoln, 'Making a good impression: Diana Mantuana's printmaking career', Renaissance Quarterly, no. 4, 1997, pp. 1101-1147.
National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC, Italian Women Artists from Renaissance to Baroque, exhibition catalogue, 16 March - 15 July, 2007, New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 2007, pp. 126-133.
Valeria Pagani, 'Exhibition and Book Reviews, Adamo Scultori and Diana Mantovana', Print Quarterly, vol. IX, no. 1, March 1992, pp. 72-87.
