CAMPANA, Giovanni Pietro.

Di due sepolcri del secolo di Augusto scoverti tra la via Latina e l'Appia presso la tomba degli Scipioni ...

Rome, 1840. Large folio, pp. [1], 76, [14], with a fine and large vignette on title showing excavation work and 14 engraved plates; an excellent large and crisp copy, author's presentation copy 'A Madame La Baronne Braye Hommage de l'Auteur' (see below); bound in the original green printed boards with large litho illustration of Romulus and Remus on front cover, both covers enclosed by broad palmette border, a little rubbed, corners bumped, foot of spine repaired. Bookplate of Alfred Lord Bray of Stanford Hall near Lutterworth in Leicestershire. First edition of this sumptuous publication, which is one of the few excavation reports published by the archaeologist and collector Campana (1808-1880). Author's presentation copy, inscribed on front cover to Baroness Braye of Stanford Hall. Sarah Cave Otway (1772-1862) succeeded to the title of Baroness Bray in 1839.Campana excavated a large and richly decorated subterranean vault lined with burial niches, which he believed to be the family tomb of Pomponius Hylas. Campana donated the tomb to the state but retained the movable marbles and some of the loose inscriptions for his own collection.Campana was a fanatical collector of antiquities on a monumental scale. At the height of his fame his collection was displayed in his palazzo in Via del Babuino, in his villa outside Rome and stored in three further warehouses. His compulsive accumulation proved also his disgrace. In 1833 Campana had been appointed director general of the Monte di Pietà in Rome which operated as a loan and savings bank. Campana increasingly borrowed money from the Monte to fund his antiquities acquisitions. In the 1850s he finally defaulted, was tried for fraud, sentenced to 20 years, and only saved from prison, when the Pope commuted the sentence to exile, stripping Campana of all his worldly possessions. Attempts to sell the collection in its entirety to the British Museum or the Louvre failed; it was eventually broken up, the bulk purchased by Napoleon III and the Tsar, while the British Museum, Florence, Brussels and the Vatican acquired several pieces.The work was reprinted in 1843 (unrecorded, but see our cat. 1303, item 41) with identical collation. A so-called 'second edition' was published in 1852 (Borroni 4626¹).Borroni 4626.

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• 订书号：: A923

• 书商: Bernard Quaritch Ltd. (GREAT BRITAIN)