Giampietro Campana

Giampietro Campana (Giovanni Pietro Campana, * 1808 in Rome, † October 10, 1880 ibid, since 1849 the Marquis de Cavelli ), was an Italian art collector. Its partly brought into being dishonestly collection was sold after his arrest and conviction. A large part acquired in 1861 France.

Conclusion of the collection

Giampietro Campana came from a wealthy bourgeois family, he had, among other large land holdings and marble quarries. He was also director of the state pawnshop Monte di Pietà in Rome and fascinated by archeology. He built over about 25 years, a significant collection of ancient artifacts on, and also financed itself excavations, especially in Cerveteri, Etruscan Caere. Campana also collected Italian medieval art. On November 28, 1857 Campana was arrested and convicted after a sensational trial in July 1858 to 20 years imprisonment. His collection was confiscated by the Papal States and sold in the sequence. To finance his purchases, Campana had in fact taken a means of institution over which he presided in claim.

After the Campana Campanareliefs are named.

The fate of the collection

When sales of 1861 larger stocks went to Great Britain and Russia, the majority, however, was on personal intervention of Napoleon III. purchased from France. The Emperor also successfully lobbied for a conversion of the sentence Campanas in exile one. To the then very large sum of 800,000 francs earned 4 France 11,835 art objects, including 646 paintings. The collection was first presented with great success as Musée Napoléon III from 1 May 1862 the former industrial palace of the Paris World Exposition in 1855. It was at first thought to make the acquired collection Campana to the base floor of a new permanent museum on the type of, later Kensington Museum in London. However, it was the Louvre, to secure the most valuable parts of the stocks, the rest were scattered over the French provincial museums, where it came to the separation of counterparts and even to the division of Polyptichen. Larger parts of this improperly scattered parts of the collection were brought together from the 1970s at the Musée du Petit Palais in Avignon. The holdings of Greek and Etruscan pottery of the Louvre originate mainly from the Campana collection.