Giampietro Campana

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Photo by Giampietro Campana (before 1857/58)

Giampietro Campana (Giovanni Pietro Campana, * 1808 in Rome , † October 10, 1880 there , since 1849 Marquis de Cavelli) was an Italian entrepreneur and art collector. His fortune, some of which was dishonestly brought about, and his collection were confiscated and sold after his imprisonment and conviction. The French state acquired a large part of it in 1861.

Creation of the collection

Giampietro Campana came from a wealthy middle-class family, he owned, among other things, large estates and marble quarries. He was the director of the state pawn shop Monte di Pietà in Rome and, as such, made a considerable fortune. He was enthusiastic about archeology and built up an important collection of ancient finds over a period of about 25 years. He also financed excavations himself, especially at Cerveteri , the ancient Caere , Etruscan Caisra . Campana also collected Italian art from the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance . Campana was arrested on November 28, 1857 and, after a sensational trial in July 1858, sentenced to 20 years imprisonment for abuse of office and embezzlement. His collection was confiscated by the Papal States and subsequently sold. To finance his purchases, Campana had drawn on funds from the institution he headed.

View of the list of the Campanas collection from the 2nd edition of his book Antiche opere in plastica, 1851.

Fate of the collection

When it was sold in 1861, larger stocks went to Great Britain and Russia, but the majority was due to the personal intervention of Napoleon III. acquired by France. The emperor also successfully campaigned for Campana's prison sentence to be converted into exile. For the then very significant sum of 4.8 million francs, France acquired 11,835 art objects, including 646 paintings. The collection was initially presented with great success as the Musée Napoléon III from May 1, 1862 in the former industrial palace of the Paris World Exhibition in 1855 . It was also initially considered to make the acquired Campana collection the basis of a new permanent museum in the style of the Kensington Museum in London. However, the Louvre succeeded in securing the most valuable parts of the holdings, the rest was scattered over the French provincial museums, whereby it came to the separation of counterparts and partly to the division of polyptychs . From the 1970s onwards, larger parts of this scattered collection of old Italian painting could be brought together in the Musée du Petit Palais in Avignon . The Louvre's holdings of Greek and Etruscan ceramics come mainly from the Campana collection.

Others

The so-called Campana reliefs and the Etruscan tomb Tomba Campana near Formello , which he discovered in 1843, are named after Giampietro Campana . In the 20th century it turned out that the grave allegedly discovered by him and named after him had already been measured decades before and the numerous grave goods found there originally came from other excavations led by Campana.

literature

  • Nicola Parise:  Campana, Giovanni Pietro. In: Alberto M. Ghisalberti (Ed.): Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI). Volume 17:  Calvart-Canefri. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 1974.
  • Helen and Albert Borowitz: Pawnshop and palaces. The fall and rise of the Campana art museum. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington 1991, ISBN 1-56098-010-9 .
  • Susanna Sarti: Giovanni Pietro Campana, 1808-1880. The man and his collection. Archaeopress, Oxford 2001, ISBN 1-84171-258-2 .

Web links

Commons : Giampietro Campan  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Nicola Parise:  Giampietro Campana. In: Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI).
  2. ↑ On the history of the collection on the website of the Museum in Avignon, in French .
  3. ↑ Filipp Delpino: La tomba Campana e la “sua scoperta” . In: Iefke von Kampen (ed.): Il nuovo Museo dell'Agro Veientano a Palazzo Chigi di Formello . Edizioni Quasar, Rome 2012, ISBN 978-88-7140-481-3 pp. 97-102
personal data
SURNAME Campana, Giampietro
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Campana Marquis de Cavelli, Giampietro
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian art collector
DATE OF BIRTH 1808
PLACE OF BIRTH Rome
DATE OF DEATH October 10, 1880
Place of death Rome