Giampietro Campana - Collection

Collection

Campana's collection ranged over bronzes and marble sculpture, the Roman architectural terracotta reliefs that are still called "Campana" reliefs, ceramics, numismatics and medals, acquired on the market and through excavations on his own properties and other sites and handsomely arranged and displayed at the Villa del Laterano. He also collected Italian paintings, forming a notable collection of the so-called "primitives" of the 14th and 15th centuries.

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, as well as publishing his own collection of the terracotta relief plaques of the Republican era that bear his name still. His obtained prominent positions with the pontifical administration and was placed in charge of the excavations at Ostia. 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. The villa of his grandfather at the brow and gently rolling upper slopes of the Caelian Hill, formerly a retreat of Paolo della Croce, was entered through wrought iron gates in via di San Stefano di Rotondo just off piazza di S. Giovanni in Laterano; it had been beautified and its long range extended in a classicising manner that seemed to one lady visitor "a temple of old Rome, with well-proportioned columns and pediment". 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. The site had some genuinely antique precedents, remains of the domus of Plautius Lateranus traversed by remains of the Claudian aqueduct; a frescoed triclinium excavated on the site in the time of Campana's father was memorialised in engravings. Annexed to the villa was the tiny ancient Church of Santa Maria Imperatrice. The two sections of the extensive grounds were connected by a private tunnel beneath via Santi Quattro Coronati.