João Maria Correia Ayres de Campos (his surname also graphed Aires de Campos in contemporary Portuguese), 1st Count of Ameal, GCC, CvNSC, OOPA (Coimbra, 5 February 1847 – 13 July 1920) was a Portuguese politician and antiquarian, best known as a great art collector, maecenas and bibliophile. He is renowned chiefly for 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) on that decade. Several pieces belonging to him have since been incorporated in the collections of the Louvre, the Prado, the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga in Lisbon and the Soares dos Reis National Museum in Porto.
Early life and family
João Maria Correia Ayres de Campos was born out of wedlock in Coimbra, the son of João Correia Ayres de Campos and Leonor da Conceição. His father, a magistrate and amateur archaeologist who for a number of years represented Coimbra in the Portuguese National Assembly, only saw to his official legitimation in 1860. From his father the Count of Ameal would eventually inherit a sizeable collection of manuscripts and early printed books as well as a small number of antiquities and archaeological artefacts, a legacy which would form the basis of his own private collection.
As a young man, João Maria studied Law at the University of Coimbra – following on the footsteps of his father, who had pursued the same course of studies there in the 1830s. In 1876, he married Maria Amélia de Sande Mexia Vieira da Mota; issuing from an old landed family with tradition in the areas of magistrature and academia, she was the niece and sole heir of Carlos Pinto Vieira da Mota, 1st Count of Juncal, who would distinguish himself in the last decades of the nineteenth century as head of the Portuguese Supreme Court of Justice. They had four children.
His eldest son and successor was João de Sande Magalhães Mexia Ayres de Campos, 1st Viscount of Ameal, later 2nd Count of Ameal, a politician and diplomat and a key participant in the failed republican Municipal Library Elevator Coup of 1908.
His grandson, João Francisco de Barbosa Azevedo de Sande Ayres de Campos, 3rd Count of Ameal, would become a prolific author and historian during Portugal's Estado Novo, signing his works with the pseudonym João Ameal.
Political career and honours
Having obtained his bachelor's degree in 1874 and his licentiate in 1875, João Maria Correia Ayres de Campos joined the Partido Regenerador, a conservative political party opposed to the Partido Progressista during the Liberal Monarchy. Its chairman for the District of Coimbra, he was elected mayor of Coimbra (at the time the country's third city in size and importance) in 1893, serving in this position until 1895. Throughout this decade he also served intermittently as deputy to the Parliament of Portugal, where he was a member of the parliamentary committees for Public Administration (1893 and 1894), Commerce and the Arts (1894) and Statistics (1897).
Over the course of his public life, Ayres de Campos would be awarded the Grand Cross of the Military Order of Christ, a knighthood in the Royal Order of the Immaculate Conception of Vila Viçosa and both the Gold and Silver Palms of the French Ordre des Palmes Académiques. In 1890, he was also received as a fellow of the Lisbon Geographic Society.
Upon his retirement from active political life in 1901, he was created Count of Ameal by king Charles I of Portugal - a title which refers to the small hamlet in the outskirts of Coimbra where his paternal ascendants had their roots and family home. On the same occasion, his eldest son - a politician and diplomat then serving in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs under Venceslau de Lima - was granted the courtesy title Viscount of Ameal.
To embellish his coat-of-arms, he chose the motto Ars Super Omnia ("Art Above All Things").