"A Child's First Misfortune" by Pietro Bernasconi

Pietro Bernasconi (1826-1891, Italian), A Child's First Misfortune, white carrara marble, modelled as a small boy standing rubbing his eyes with his fist in sorrow after his cup has fallen and broken into pieces on the ground, with a pot of flowers behind him, raised on a circular marble base. Inscribed Pietro Bernasconi, Milano, 1880. With a pink and grey marble column and matched cubed base, the sculpture 93 cm high, 30 cm wide. The pedestal 99 cm high, 30.5 cm wide, 30.5 cm deep. Exhibitions: An identical example was exhibited at the United States Centennial exhibition, 1876, Centennial Art exhibition, Italian Department, Memorial Hall,Philadelphia. Official catalogue no. 2: 'Bernasconi, Pietro, Milan, A Child's First Misfortune'. Auction catalogue of statuary and paintings from Italy's exhibit, Centennial Exposition, Philadelphia, the Messrs Leavitt, Auctioneers, March 22, 1877, cat. No. 7, 'A child's Misfortune' marble pedestal, Literature: the Unfinished exhibition: Visualizing Myth, Memory, and the shadow of the civil war in Centennial America by Susanna gold, 2016, figure 1.4, p. 24, Other Notes: According to Sartain's (the Centennial international Curator) design, just through the doors of either Memorial hall or the Annex, an assembly of Italian figural sculpture would immediately engulf the visitor in the vestibule, where 'the countrymen of Canova seize US with a multitude of marble hands' and 'swarms from the Carrara hive surround us' so that 'we cannot escape them if we would'. Sentimental depictions of children in animated youthful attitudes and expression, ' a great nursery of children'.. Including Pietro Bernasconi's ' a child of Misfortune'...'Nothing in the whole exhibition attracted so much attention as the Italian Statuary'.