Deep In The Heart Art Foundry of Bastrop Texas Comes to Rescue of Coppini Victims Statue Project. See link below: John, I am sorry this has happened. I have been working on a possible solution to this project before this all happened. I have an idea not only to fund the sculpture, but create the entire [...]
Houston Chronicle - April 2018
GO FUND ME CAMPAIGN: When it comes right down to it, there is no elemental nor fundamental difference between Florentine sculptor Pompeo Coppini and his masterpiece “Victims of the Galveston Flood” (10 feet tall - San Antonio 1904) and Michelangelo’s “David” (17 feet tall - Florence 1504) other than 400 years but who’s counting. They [...]
William Randolph Hearst organized and promoted the Galveston Orphans Bazaar on October 17, 1900 at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel to raise funds for the actual victims of the Storm of 1900. Area artists were asked to donate art works for the auction. Pompeo Coppini donated his first iteration of a maquette that would later become [...]
The "Victims of the Galveston Flood" statue’s history is dizzying and perplexing. Theories for how UT “lost” the entire 24 piece statuary including “Victims of the Galveston Flood” heroic statue in order of the most/least plausible. It is a fact that we have documentation showing that all 24 plaster-paris statues and portrait busts, by piece, [...]
On May 22, 2019, Houston Public Media's "Houston Matters" broadcast interviewed The Lost Coppini Statue Project's John Bernardoni. Show host Craig Cohen reviewed the salient facts surrounding the mysterious disappearance of Pompeo Coppini's masterpiece, "Victims of the Galveston Flood" heroic statue from 1904. The original plaster-paris statue at 10 feet in height vanished from the [...]
The Lost Coppini Statue Project has recently received a challenge grant pledge of $100,000 from a prominent anonymous Texas family whose own family survived the Storm of 1900. The challenge grant is to be used as seed money to kick start the re-creation of Pompeo Coppini’s 1904 masterpiece “Victims of the Galveston Flood” heroic statue [...]
This September 8, 2019 will mark the 119th anniversary of the Galveston Storm of 1900 in which over 8000 souls drowned in the single deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history. Thousands more died inland. Giovanni Carlo Bernardoni, an Italian immigrant from Bientina, Italy near Pisa, died trying to save another family after securing his wife [...]
DEATH-DEALING STORMS IN OTHER COUNTRIES IN 19TH CENTURY: 1864—Calcutta, India; 45,000 lives and 100 ships lost. 1881—Haifong, China; 300,000 lives lost. 1881—England; great destruction of life and property and many lives lost. 1882—Manila, Philippine Islands; 60,000 families rendered homeless and 100 lives lost. 1886—Madrid, Spain; 32 killed, 620 injured. 1887—Australian coast; 550 pearl fishers perished. [...]