The Campana jewelry collection, which was acquired by France in 1861, consists for the most part of Etruscan, Greek, and Roman pieces, together with a number of pastiches assembled from ancient and modern elements that played a major role in the history of jewelry styles and techniques in the 19th century.
In its time, the collection assembled by the marchese Giovanni Pietro Campana, which was made up of very diverse pieces from both antiquity and the 19th century, was thought to be one of the biggest and most varied in Europe. When it was put on sale, it was coveted by the leading European museums, but it was France that acquired the biggest portion in 1861.
When it was put up for sale, pieces that formed one of the original cores of this collection were given to the Castellani workshop for restoration (1858–59). They enabled this famous family of Roman goldsmiths to study ancient techniques, providing them with models and sources of inspiration for their own creations.
Exhibited at the Palais de l’Industrie in 1862, and then at the Louvre from 1863, the pieces from the Campana collection helped create a vogue for this type of jewelry. They thus played an important role in the history of archaeological jewelry throughout Europe at a time when the fine arts and industry were coming together, resulting in the creation in 1863 in Paris of the Union Centrale des Beaux-Arts Appliqués à l’Industrie and in 1872 in Rome of an industrial arts museum.
Today, the jewelry from the Campana collection forms a major part of the Department of Greek, Etruscan, and Roman Antiquities’ collection of goldwork.
