'Rorco road, Polla'
Date
1857
Creator
Alphonse Bernoud (1820 - 1889, French) , Photographer
Object type
Archive reference number
Material
Technique
Dimensions
height (print): 75mm
width (print): 144mm
height (mount): 87mm
width (mount): 176mm
width (print): 144mm
height (mount): 87mm
width (mount): 176mm
Subject
Content object
Description
Stereoscopic view of earthquake damage at Polla, Naples, showing ruined buildings along the Rorco road. The landscape study shows the impact to one side of the buildings, with the walls entirely collapsed revealing the inner structure. Four [?] figures stand in the foreground among the rubble and fallen timbers.
Numbered ‘66’ in pencil in the upper right-hand corner, with a further number, ‘56’, marked in ink but faded. Titled ‘Polla Strada Rorco’ on the right-hand margin of the front mount. Inscribed on the verso in pencil, ‘Polla. Pag. 101. P.1 a sketch of [Vig… ?] with some [?].’
This illustration was reproduced as a lithograph, and in a simplified form, in Great Neapolitan Earthquake of 1857: The first principles of observational seismology as developed in the report to the Royal Society..., by Robert Mallet, 2 vols., (London, Chapman and Hall, 1862), pp.98-99. Numbered ‘Photo pl.66’ and mentioned on page 99 as an example of the damage caused when the direction of the shock is nearly perpendicular to the plane of the picture, and from the observer.
Robert Mallet (1810–1881), an Irish civil engineer and geologist, was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1854.
Numbered ‘66’ in pencil in the upper right-hand corner, with a further number, ‘56’, marked in ink but faded. Titled ‘Polla Strada Rorco’ on the right-hand margin of the front mount. Inscribed on the verso in pencil, ‘Polla. Pag. 101. P.1 a sketch of [Vig… ?] with some [?].’
This illustration was reproduced as a lithograph, and in a simplified form, in Great Neapolitan Earthquake of 1857: The first principles of observational seismology as developed in the report to the Royal Society..., by Robert Mallet, 2 vols., (London, Chapman and Hall, 1862), pp.98-99. Numbered ‘Photo pl.66’ and mentioned on page 99 as an example of the damage caused when the direction of the shock is nearly perpendicular to the plane of the picture, and from the observer.
Robert Mallet (1810–1881), an Irish civil engineer and geologist, was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1854.
Object history
With the support of the Royal Society, Mallet undertook a survey of the damage caused by the 1857 earthquake in Basilicata, in the Kingdom of Naples, to advance his theories of seismic waves. Two French photographers, Alphonse Bernoud and an unidentified man known as Grellier, were employed to photograph the affected region. For a description of Mallet's expedition and the circumstances and attributions of the photographs, see Graziano Ferrari and Anita McConnell, "Robert Mallet and the 'Great Neapolitan Earthquake' of 1857", Notes and Records of the Royal Society 59 (1) (2005), pp. 45–64.
Associated place