Giovan Battista Scultori Intagliator di stampe e scultore eccellente

This volume accompanies the exhibition devoted to Giovan Battista Scultori presented in Mantua at the Museo di Palazzo Ducale from 20 April to 21 July 2024. Scultori is a figure of exceptional interest for the development of the Mantuan school of engraving in the 16th century.

In Cinquecento Italy, the name of Giovan Battista “Scultori” (1503-1575), a pupil of Giulio Romano, was well known throughout the peninsula, and his personal life – in at least one case, his arrest in 1567 by the Inquisition – caused a sensation. In addition to being an engraver, he was also a skilled stucco worker, sculptor, carver and bronze worker, spreading Mantuan art to various Italian cities and beyond.
The exhibition and the catalogue that accompanies it deal with some enigmas, including the relationship between master and pupil, namely between Giulio Romano and Scultori; the role in the invention of prints of another important Cinquecento figure, Giovan Battista Bertani; and finally the ultimate purposes of the prints themselves, perhaps conceived more as a proof of skill and a mode of self-presentation than for actual commercial purposes.

The exhibition brings together for the first time all of Scultori’s engravings, together with others doubtfully attributed to him, three of his copperplates, goldsmith’s objects associated with him and some engravings by Giorgio Ghisi, his highly skilled pupil.