Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction: Women Artists in the Early Modern Courts of Europe, c. 1450–1700
- 2 Female Court Artists: Women's Career Strategies in the Courts of the Early Modern Period
- 3 Caterina van Hemessen in the Habsburg Court of Mary of Hungary
- 4 Sofonisba Anguissola, a Painter and a Lady-in-Waiting
- 5 Creative Reproductions: Diana Mantuana and Printmaking at Court
- 6 ‘Una persona dependente alla Serenissima Gran Duchessa’ : Female Embroiderers and Lacemakers between the courts of Florence and France
- 7 Life at Court: Luisa Roldán in Madrid 1689–1706
- Bibliography
- Index
5 - Creative Reproductions: Diana Mantuana and Printmaking at Court
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 October 2021
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction: Women Artists in the Early Modern Courts of Europe, c. 1450–1700
- 2 Female Court Artists: Women's Career Strategies in the Courts of the Early Modern Period
- 3 Caterina van Hemessen in the Habsburg Court of Mary of Hungary
- 4 Sofonisba Anguissola, a Painter and a Lady-in-Waiting
- 5 Creative Reproductions: Diana Mantuana and Printmaking at Court
- 6 ‘Una persona dependente alla Serenissima Gran Duchessa’ : Female Embroiderers and Lacemakers between the courts of Florence and France
- 7 Life at Court: Luisa Roldán in Madrid 1689–1706
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Abstract
Maria Maurer examines the career of Diana Mantuana (c. 1547–1612), the first female printmaker to sign her work and one of the few female artists mentioned by Vasari in the second edition of his Lives (1568). Recognizing that printmaking was an unusual female occupation due to its technique and wide circulation, Maurer argues that Diana entered into visual dialogue with Mantuan and papal court artists to promote her work. Focusing on two prints made after the work of Giulio Romano, Maurer reveals that, through her work in a reproductive medium, the artist commented upon the ability of women and printmaking to both copy and generate, engaging broader discourses regarding imitation and invention to market herself as a rare commodity.
Keywords: Mantua; papal privilege; Renaissance engravings; artistic invention; Gonzaga court; female printmaker
In the second edition of his Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects Giorgio Vasari recounts meeting the engraver Diana Mantuana (c. 1547–1612) during his visit to the Gonzaga court in 1566. Vasari describes her as kind, gracious and talented, and portrays both the artist and her works as ‘marvellous things’, whose strangeness both attracts and repels. Medusa-like, Diana and her prints stupefy Vasari, while her grace and beauty charm him. He also portrays Mantua as fertile ground, where ‘the artisans have multiplied, and continue to multiply’. He goes on to establish an artistic lineage in which Diana, the daughter of Giovanni Battista Scultori, descends from Giulio Romano and Marcantonio Raimondi. Vasari's Diana is a natural wonder produced by generations of Mantuan procreativity, yet her attraction lies not in the virtuosity of her art, but in the exoticism of her existence. Diana is the last of her dynasty, for Vasari gives her no artistic progeny. His account is a double-edged sword, at once praising a woman who engraves, while also rendering her an oddity. He highlights Diana's artistic lineage, while suggesting that she lacks the ability to produce her own creative legacy.
In her prints Diana shrewdly appropriates and upends Vasari's criticism, making use of the fame his mention of her afforded, while also demonstrating her ability to participate in sixteenth-century discourses surrounding artistic creativity. In inscriptions on Christ and the Adulteress (fig. 5.1) and the Feast of the Gods (fig. 5.2), both dated 1575, she describes herself as ‘giving birth’ to her works.
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- Women Artists in the Early Modern Courts of Europec. 1450-1700, pp. 113 - 138Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2021