Giampietro Campana
Giampietro Campana (1808 – 10 October 1880), created marchese di Cavelli (1849), was an Italian art collector who assembled one of the nineteenth century's greatest collection of Greek and Roman sculpture and antiquities.
The part of his collection of Hellenistic and Roman gold jewellery conserved in the Musée du Louvre warranted an exhibition devoted to it in 2005–06.
In 1835 he was made a cavaliere of the Order of the Golden Spur by Pope Gregory XVI in gratitude for the loans that the reorganized Monte di Pietà had been able to make to the Vatican.
Thanks to his mature experience in the archaeological field— which in the mid-19th century was still a treasure hunt for works of art and curiosities, even in the hands of a sophisticated amateur— Campana was responsible for the discovery of the columbarium of Pomponius Hylas and two other columbarii near the tomb of the Scipios, of which he directed the publication,[3] as well as publishing his own collection of the terracotta relief plaques of the Republican era that bear his name still.
From 1842 he published several editions of his collection of moulded terracotta tiles, under the title Antiche opere in plastica, in which he offered antiquarian essays on the mythological and iconographic representations on the moulded relief panels and tiles; this was the first work to draw attention to these neglected architectural elements, which had a long pre-Roman history in Etruscan civilization In 1846 Pope Pius IX made a stately visit to inspect the collection at the Villa Campana, to which Campana had removed his Roman sculptures.
[d] Its curving drive was shaded with some of the first Eucalyptus in Rome, and in the garden, along with exotic plants, fountains and grottoes, Giampietro Campana recreated an Etruscan tomb.
Blewett's description of the collection at Palazzo Campana is worth quoting: The specimens consist for the most part of gold ornaments, earrings in the form of genii, necklaces of scarabæi, filigree brooches, bracelets, neckchains, torques, chapelets in form of foliage &c.; the head of the horned Bacchus, and a gold fibula with an Etruscan inscription, equal, if they do not surpass, the finest productions of Trichinopoly or Genoa.
The Cabinet of Bronzes comprises a fine series of Etruscan and Roman objects: 2 beautiful tripods, a mirror of extraordinary beauty and size, and a cinerary urn of most rare occurrence in metal; it was found near Perugia, containing the ashes of the dead, with a golden necklace, now amongst the jewellery; a bier of bronze, with the bottom in latticework, like that in the Museo Gregoriano, with the helmet, breastplate, greaves and sword of the warrior whose body reposed upon it.
[10]In around 1858 Campana published a catalogue of his collection which he divided into twelve sections: Vases (I), Bronzes (II), Jewellery and coins (III), Terracottas (IV), Glass (V), Etruscan, Greek and Roman paintings (VI), Greek and Roman sculpture (VII), Italian paintings from the Byzantine period to Raphael (VIII), Italian paintings from 1500 to ca 1700 (IX), Italian Maiolica of the 15th-16th centuries (X), Maiolica by Luca della Robbia and his contemporaries (XI), and Etruscan and Roman curiosities (XII).
In hopes of finding a buyer, the antique gold was entrusted to the Castellani atelier, founded in 1814 by Fortunato Pio Castellani (1794-1865), a goldsmith, antiquarian and collector, whose atelier producing jewellery and goldsmith's work was among the first to take inspiration from the gold of Antiquity that was being recovered by Campana and others from excavations in the Roman Campagna and in Etruria.
[l] Augusto Castellani (1829-1914) studied the Campana gold and made sensitive restorations, which in some examples amount to pastiches assembled from antique fragments, and presented a catalogue.
