The Galerie Campana A visit to explore Greek pottery – temporarily closed
In a series of nine rooms along the river Seine, thousands of vases give a comprehensive overview of ancient Greek pottery. The gallery is named after the Marquis Giampetro Campana (1807–1880), whose collection was famous throughout Europe in the 19th century. Today, it is made up of three different spaces: one introductory room (659), three study rooms (656–658), and one chronological display through five rooms.
The Galerie Campana is currently closed. We apologise for the inconvenience.
The Marquis Campana – a colourful figure
The Marquis Giampietro Campana (1807–1880) had one of the most extensive private collections of art that Europe had ever known. It consisted of thousands of ancient objects, as well as many Italian works from different periods. Indeed, the Marquis Campana wanted to build a collection that represented the breadth of artistic production in all of Italy. From the start, he bought many works of art, and even took it upon himself to organise archaeological digs.
But his passion came at a price that neither his personal fortune nor his salary as director of the Monte di Pietà – a charitable institutional pawnbroker in Rome – could afford. In 1857, the Marquis Campana was arrested for financial foul play. His collection was confiscated and put up for sale. Many art lovers looking for a deal came from all of Europe, including the Tsar Alexander II and Emperor Napoleon III. The latter bought the bulk of Campana’s collection with his personal funds: thousands of ancient works and hundreds of Italian paintings. The emperor had them displayed in French museums, notably the Louvre and the Petit Palais in Avignon.
Creating the gallery over the course of the 19th century
Before these rooms held the Campana Collection, they were exhibition spaces, having held works since 1819. Refurbished by architect Pierre Fontaine, the so-called ‘Riverside Gallery’ featured painted ceilings with historical scenes from 1825 to 1833. The Galerie Campana, renovated by Hector Lefuel, was inaugurated in 1863; it held the Marquis’s collection in elegant wall display cases. Through this exceptional acquisition, the Louvre was at the time the foremost collector of ancient pottery.
Ceilings steeped in history
Lefuel decided to keep the ceilings that were painted between 1828 and 1833. The themes they feature were appropriate for the new function of the gallery: the patronage of the kings of France. The most famous French sovereigns are portrayed as protectors of the arts: Charlemagne, Louis XII, François I, Henri IV, Louis XIII, Louis XIV, etc. Even General Bonaparte is up there, in L’Expédition d’Égypte, which evokes his military campaigns in Egypt but also the scientific and artistic research he sponsored.
The gallery today – a blend of tradition and innovation
The scenography was updated in 2022–2023 with due regard for the traditions that leant the space its remarkable individuality, as well as the need for a technical, scientific and educational overhaul. The most striking innovation is the creation of a large thematic room introducing the Campana visitor trail.
Room 659: a room to introduce Greek vases and the Galerie Campana
This room, introducing the Galerie Campana, presents Greek vases according to three aspects: shapes (as vases were objects intended to be used daily), techniques (explaining how Greek vases were made and painted), and images, whose exceptional diversity is, among other things, a wonderful introduction to the world of Greek mythology. Featuring spectacular educational tools showcasing the collection, such as interactive touchscreens explaining vase shapes and Greek myths, the room provides visitors with the keys to appreciating Greek pottery and invites them to keep exploring the rest of the Campana trail.
La galerie Campana
Study rooms (656–658)
The study rooms – temporarily closed in 2003 to serve as storage space for the Louvre’s prevention plan against flood risk from the nearby Seine –the study rooms present a more extended view of the collection, classifying works along chronological and typological (shape) criteria. These rooms are accessible to all, and on museum closing day (Tuesdays) they are made available to researchers, who can use the tables provided to set out and study the artworks.
Chronological series
Rooms 655–651 should be visited (in that order) by anyone seeking to understand the timeline of Greek pottery. They offer a journey through a thousand years of history (from the 10th to the 1st century BC) and feature both masterpieces and serial works, classified by era and by location of production – a tangible encyclopaedia!
The vessels on display show the technical progress made over the course of centuries. One example is the potter’s wheel, and especially the so-called fast wheel, which allowed for more even shapes to be formed. With improved kilns came greater mastery over firing. It allowed potters to attain the deep black hues that made Greek pottery famous. The vases’ decorations also underwent major transformations: from their very geometrical beginnings, they came to feature first animal, then human figures; these later evolved into full-blown scenes from mythology, combat, or everyday life.
In addition to the gallery’s new design and lighting, which radically transform the visitor experience, the introduction of a map in the alcove located between rooms 655 and 654 allows the visitor to visualise the exchanges of pottery types in the ancient world and to identify places of production and discovery, two of the most fundamental pieces of information on the artwork labels.
Masterpieces of Greek pottery
Attic geometric krater
Circular pyxis
Corinthian plastic aryballos in the form of an owl
Orientalising Ionian oinochoe in the 'Wild Goat' style
Corinthian black-figure krater known as the 'Eurytios Krater'
Corinthian black-figure hydria: Nereids mourning Achilles
Attic black-figure exaleiptron: the birth of Athena
Attic black-figure belly-amphora: Heracles and the three-bodied Geryon
Black-figure olpe: Heracles is taken to Mount Olympus
The Berlin Painter, Attic red-figure bell-krater: Ganymedes
Attic red-figure cup: Eos and Memnon
Apulian red-figure bell-krater known as the 'Eumenides Krater': the awakening of the Erinyes (Furies) and the purification of Orestes at Delphi
Did you know?
Trick vases
Greek ceramics also take us into a playful universe full of visual humour and wordplay (see display case 1, room 659). Potters created ‘trick’ vases as well. The drinking satyr (inv. no. CA 454, display case 14, room 654) is actually a communicating vessel: any liquid poured into the large drinking vessel that the figure holds will flow into the vase’s base and the figure itself. The vessel’s mechanism is activated by means of the two holes in the satyr’s head and back: the water hidden within the figure’s body, first held back by blocking the holes with two fingers, springs out of the hidden compartment upon releasing the holes to let in the air – and the unsuspecting victim who has brought the vessel to their lips gets a faceful of water!
Did you know?
The miracle of firing
Though the range of hues they offer is, with a few exceptions, quite restricted, Greek vases have an unmistakable lustre due to the firing process. Firing is a mandatory step in the making of a vase: it makes the vessel both sturdy and impermeable. Greek potters had perfect mastery of the three-phase firing process, which also served to fully reveal the decoration on the vases – contrasting black slip (a clay used for decorating) and the lighter colour of natural clay. This contrast was particularly intense in vessels produced in Athens: in black-figure vases, figures were painted in black on light-coloured backgrounds; in red-figure vases, they were red over a black background.
Did you know?
The face of Europe
The European Central Bank was in the market for a face of Europe for its bank notes, and the Louvre had just the thing. The figure of Europa (a young woman loved by Zeus who changed himself into a white bull and carried her off to the continent that would later bear her name) on a crater vase made about 360 BC now features as a watermark on Euro notes.
More to explore
A Royal Setting for Egyptian Antiquities
The Musée Charles X
Ideal Greek Beauty
Venus de Milo and the Galerie des Antiques
