Diana Scultori
Italian engraver (1547–1612)
Diana Scultori (also known as Diana Mantuana and Diana Ghisi; 1547 – 5 April 1612) was an Italian engraver from Mantua, Italy. She is one of the earliest known women printmakers, making mostly reproductive engravings of well-known paintings or drawings, especially those of Raphael and Giulio Romano, or ancient Roman sculptures.
She was one of four children of the sculptor and engraver Giovanni Battista Scultori and the sister of the artist Adamo Scultori, who was many years older. Both of them are often called "Ghisi" from the family's close association with Giorgio Ghisi, a more significant artist, and a misreading of a remark by Vasari. Diana learned the art of engraving from her father, and probably her brother. She was mentioned in the second edition of Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the Artists (1568).
In 1565, she met her first husband, the 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 advance her husband's career. On 5 June 1575, she received a Papal Privilege to make and market her own work.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3026163. VIAF identifies the subject as 79099956. The Library of Congress control number is n91083651. 2 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1547, 1612, 1568 and 1565.
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This entry incorporates text from “Diana Scultori” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.