"Pertosa, southern entrance"
Date
1857
Creator
Alphonse Bernoud (1820 - 1889, French) , Photographer
Object type
Archive reference number
Material
Technique
Dimensions
height (print): 72mm
width (print): 140mm
height (mount): 84mm
width (mount): 172mm
width (print): 140mm
height (mount): 84mm
width (mount): 172mm
Subject
Content object
Description
Stereoscopic view of earthquake damage to Pertosa, Italy. Landscape study of the southern entrance, looking towards the centre of the town, surrounding hills in the distance. The buildings along the right-hand side of the road are in piles of rubble and ruins.
Numbered “148” in pencil, upper left-hand corner, front mount. Inscribed verso “Pertosa. Page 250, p.II.” A further label reads “Pertosa. To say that at Pertosa one-third of the population was destroyed, is to speak within bounds. The village contained some four hundred houses, one hundred and seventy-six of which were, in less than half a minute, rendered to the condition seen in the present view. No positive information can be obtained from any reliable source, as to the number of the inhabitants. If the government had displayed the same alacrity in assisting the population in this dreadful calamity, as it does when any insurrectionary movement is suspected, at least one-half of the victims might have been saved.”
Unpublished but referenced in Great Neapolitan Earthquake of 1857: The first principles of observational seismology as developed in the report to the Royal Society..., by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. 148 (Coll. Roy. Soc.) vol. 1, page 274 and Photog. No. 67 (Coll. Roy. Soc.) vol.1, page 100. Showing how the effect of the shockwave, with its path perpendicular to the plane of the image and its observer, only affected the right-hand side of the street, with the left comparatively safe.
Numbered “148” in pencil, upper left-hand corner, front mount. Inscribed verso “Pertosa. Page 250, p.II.” A further label reads “Pertosa. To say that at Pertosa one-third of the population was destroyed, is to speak within bounds. The village contained some four hundred houses, one hundred and seventy-six of which were, in less than half a minute, rendered to the condition seen in the present view. No positive information can be obtained from any reliable source, as to the number of the inhabitants. If the government had displayed the same alacrity in assisting the population in this dreadful calamity, as it does when any insurrectionary movement is suspected, at least one-half of the victims might have been saved.”
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. 148 (Coll. Roy. Soc.) vol. 1, page 274 and Photog. No. 67 (Coll. Roy. Soc.) vol.1, page 100. Showing how the effect of the shockwave, with its path perpendicular to the plane of the image and its observer, only affected the right-hand side of the street, with the left comparatively safe.
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