Giovanni Pietro Campana (1808-1880)

Studies in the History of Collections II

The Marchese Giovanni Pietro Campana was a Roman banker who formed one of the most important private collections of the first half of the 19th century. The Campana collection was an extraordinary assemblage of antiquities and modern arts and crafts, including maiolica, sculpture and painting from the medieval and Renaissance periods. This study is in two sections. The first is devoted to Campana's biography and to an examination of how he acquired and studied the objects in his collection; the second part is dedicated to the collection itself and its dispersal.