João Maria Correia Ayres de Campos, 1st Count of Ameal

Who was João Maria Correia Ayres de Campos, 1st Count of Ameal?

João Maria Correia Ayres de Campos, 1st Count of Ameal, GCC, was a Portuguese politician and antiquarian, best known as a great art collector, maecenas and bibliophile. He is renowned chiefly as having assembled one of Portugal's largest and most important private art collections, as well as what was at the time the largest private library in the country; his collections are also famous for having been auctioned en masse after his death in 1920, leading to the largest auction recorded in the Iberian peninsula and one of the largest in Europe at the time. Several pieces belonging to him have since been incorporated in the collections of the Louvre, the Prado, and the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga in Lisbon.