“Vico Parcino, Polla”
Date
1857
Creator
Alphonse Bernoud (1820 - 1889, French) , Photographer
Object type
Archive reference number
Material
Technique
Dimensions
height (print): 74mm
width (print): 148mm
height (mount): 86mm
width (mount): 177mm
width (print): 148mm
height (mount): 86mm
width (mount): 177mm
Subject
Content object
Description
Stereoscopic view of earthquake damage at Polla, Naples, showing ruined buildings along Vico Parcino. Landscape study of a street taken from the bottom of a hill and showing houses at the top less affected than those at the bottom.
Numbered “68” and titled “Polla, Vico Parcino” right hand margin, front mount. Inscribed verso “Page 101. P.1. Polla.”
Unpublished but referenced in Great Neapolitan Earthquake of 1857: The first principles of observational seismology as developed in the report to the Royal Society..., by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. 68) (Coll. Roy. Soc.) vol. 1, page 100. Mallet describes how ‘some of the highest houses in Polla were left standing tolerably safe, though full of apertures, and arched galleries in front; while the same street, lower down and near the front of the picture, was choked with the ruins of houses, of only half the height or less. The former were new and well built in comparison to the latter.’
Robert Mallet (1810–1881), an Irish civil engineer and geologist, was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1854.
Numbered “68” and titled “Polla, Vico Parcino” right hand margin, front mount. Inscribed verso “Page 101. P.1. Polla.”
Unpublished but referenced in Great Neapolitan Earthquake of 1857: The first principles of observational seismology as developed in the report to the Royal Society..., by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. 68) (Coll. Roy. Soc.) vol. 1, page 100. Mallet describes how ‘some of the highest houses in Polla were left standing tolerably safe, though full of apertures, and arched galleries in front; while the same street, lower down and near the front of the picture, was choked with the ruins of houses, of only half the height or less. The former were new and well built in comparison to the latter.’
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