Diana Scultori, Diana Montovano, or Diana Ghisi was an Italian engraver from Mantua, Italy. She is one of the earliest known women printmakers.
She was one of four children of the sculptor and engraver Giovanni Battista Ghisi. Diana learned the art of engraving from her father and the artist Giulio Romano. She received her first public recognition as an engraver in Giorgio Vasari’s second edition of his Vites (1568). In 1565 she met her first husband, architect Francesco da Volterra (Capriani). The pair moved to Rome by 1575. Once in Rome, Diana used her knowledge of business within the art world to progress her husband’s career. Soon after moving to Rome, on June 5, 1575, Diana received a Papal Privilege to make and market her own work. She used the importance of signature and dedication to her advantage. Three years later (1578) she gave birth to her son Giovanni Battista Capriani. Both Diana symbolically and Francesco actively became members of the Confraternity of San Giuseppe during their artistic careers. The last known print by Diana dates 1588. It is unlikely that she created new prints past this time due to the strong emphasis she put on signing and dating her work throughout her career. She married another architect named Giulio Pelosi after Francesco da Volterra's death in 1594. Diana later died in 1612.
The cultural changes associated with the Renaissance were providing women greater opportunities to study art, and it became possible for female artists to gain international reputations.The work of Diana Scultori, born in 1547, is a reflection of this changing climate. One of three daughters of the Scultori family, as a woman she was unable to have a formal apprenticeship, but her father taught her his trade. Despite her lack of education in drawing specifically, she was able to use drawings from other artists to learn how to produce engravings. It was not unusual for the daughters of artisans to be trained in the family craft, but it was considered uncommon for a daughter to be trained in engraving and to make it a public career as she did. She received her first public recognition as an engraver in Giorgio Vasari’s second edition of Vites (1568).
After her marriage in 1575 to the aspiring architect Francesco da Volterra, the couple moved to Rome. Here, the focus of her work was reinterpreting works by artists linked to her husband and the papal workshops. Most prints were made to promote and support his career as an architect. She was well known for being concerned with maintaining a good reputation. She was regarded as a keen business woman, and one of the few women artists whom Vasari mentioned in the 1568 edition of his Lives, noting that she "engraves so well that it is a thing to marvel at; and I who saw her, a very gentle and gracious girl, and her works, which are most beautiful, was struck with amazement." She worked within the restrictions encountered by artists of her time, female or otherwise. She used other artists' work as a foundation for her prints, but most of the drawings for her engravings came from either her husband, a family member, including her father, or an artist contemporary with whom she and her husband were acquainted.
On June 5, 1575, the year of her first dated print, Scultori received the Papal Privilege to make and market her own work. Applying for a Papal Privilege was a fairly unusual practice before the papacy of Gregory XIII, especially for women, and it allowed her to establish a name for her household. Resembling a book-printing privilege, it is about 300 words in length and names Diana as “wife of Franciscus Cipriani the architect, who is staying in this our alma Urbe...” and indicates that she learned her art from her father. The privilege suggests that Diana applied for it because she was reluctant to print her engravings without a license and it was to protect her engravings from being copied and then sold “by others of either sex, but most especially book dealers, sculptors, engravers and printers”. The privilege rendered any unlicensed publisher or vendor of her engravings liable to a heavy fine of approximately 500 ducati. Of this, one third would have gone to the Pope in office, one third to Diana, and the final third to the judge who issued the decision, naturally encouraging a judgment in favor of the artist. In addition to such a fine, the punishment also included immediate excommunication from the Catholic Church.
Her astuteness as a businesswoman can be seen not only in her successful application for a Papal Privilege, but also in her prints that promoted her husband's architectural work. Between 1576 and 1580, she made four prints featuring column capital volutes and other architectural details, including “bead and reel” and “egg and dart” moldings . Unlike many of her other prints, these prints do not appear to have been intended for a general audience, but instead for someone with advanced knowledge of ancient architectural details. One relatively lengthy inscription on the earliest dated of these four prints further supports this interpretation: "This volute and old composite capital order of a numidian stone column, from St Peter in Vaticano for the Baptistry of Saint Peter was recorded by Francesco da Volterra in order to be useful to these artists for study. Diana Mantuana, his wife, engraved it. 1576." Thus, Diana not only identifies her husband as the source for the image, but also indicates that the drawing and print were executed for the purposes of study.

More...