'Pertosa"'
Date
1857
Creator
Alphonse Bernoud (1820 - 1889, French) , Photographer
Object type
Archive reference number
Material
Technique
Dimensions
height (print): 73mm
width (print): 146mm
height (mount): 86mm
width (mount): 177mm
width (print): 146mm
height (mount): 86mm
width (mount): 177mm
Subject
Content object
Description
Stereoscopic view of earthquake damage at Pertosa, Naples, showing ruined buildings along a road, with the surrounding hills in the distance. The study shows the right-hand side of the street as viewed with collapsed walls, rubble and timbers fill the road.
Numbered ‘67’ and titled ‘Interno do Pertosa’ right hand margin of the front mount. Inscribed verso ‘Page 101. P1. Pertosa’
Unpublished but referenced in Great Neapolitan Earthquake of 1857: The first principles of observational seismology as developed in the report to the Royal Society..., by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). Photog. (No. 67) (Coll. Roy. Soc.) vol. 1, page 100. Used as an example to show how the direction of the shock affected only one side of the street… ‘in part of a street in the humbler part of Pertosa, the shock was nearly in the 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 ‘67’ and titled ‘Interno do Pertosa’ right hand margin of the front mount. Inscribed verso ‘Page 101. P1. Pertosa’
Unpublished but referenced in Great Neapolitan Earthquake of 1857: The first principles of observational seismology as developed in the report to the Royal Society..., by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). Photog. (No. 67) (Coll. Roy. Soc.) vol. 1, page 100. Used as an example to show how the direction of the shock affected only one side of the street… ‘in part of a street in the humbler part of Pertosa, the shock was nearly in the 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