Details of Sculptor

Surname

Bernasconi

Alternative Surname

First Name

Francis

Initial of Surname

B

Year of Birth/Baptism

1762

Flourished

Year of Death

1841

Biographical Details

The most fashionable purveyor of Gothic stucco work in England during the Regency period, he worked under the architects Sir Jeffrey Wyatville, James Wyatt, Sir Robert Smirke and George Dance. He is thought to have been the son of Bernato Bernasconi, one of a family of stuccoists originating from Riva San Vitale, near Lugarno. Bernato was employed as a plasterer at Claydon House, Bucks, 1770-85, and apparently settled in the county, for it was as ‘a poor man with a large fameley [sic] in the town of Buckingham’ that he asked to be paid by Lord Verney, who was then on the verge of bankruptcy (Verney archives, quoted by Gunnis 1968, 51). Francis had a son, also Francis, who was made a freeman of the Plasterers’ Company on 9 November 1805. John and Peter Bernasconi, who in 1805 repaired the exterior of Jesus College, Cambridge using Roman cement, were probably brothers.
Francis Bernasconi was employed extensively as a plasterer at country houses between 1800 and 1839. Among his many commissions he provided Gothic ornaments and other work at Cobham Hall, Kent, capitals for scagliola columns at Shugborough, Staffs and external and internal plasterwork at Compton Place, Sussex. He worked for the Grosvenor family at Grosvenor House, London and at Eaton Hall, Cheshire; refaced the exterior of Ashburnham Place, Sussex; and decorated a great hall in the gothic style at Blithfield Hall, Staffs, a house where he was employed for more than 20 years. For his work at Stafford House, London, he was paid £6,696, the largest of many four-figure sums. There were also commissions in Wales and Scotland.
The Prince Regent, later George IV, employed him at Carlton House in 1804 and at Windsor Castle, where he worked under Wyatville and was paid in 1805 for ‘Gothic elliptical arches, elliptical soffits, Gothic compo mouldings, twelve enriched spandrels, the Royal Arms, thirteen angels with plain shields etc’ (TNA WORK 5/93; 19/3 f 327). In about 1820 he modelled four groups designed by Thomas Stothard for the grand staircase at Buckingham Palace (3) and in 1833 Bernasconi & Son were paid for work at Kensington Palace.
Bernasconi restored medieval church fittings in several cathedrals. He was responsible for plasterwork in the lantern of Westminster Abbey for James Wyatt in 1803 and returned there in 1825 to execute an altarpiece (4) which ‘consisted of a series of shrines, or rather ornamental niches, canopied with a profusion of delicate tabernacle work’ (GM 1825, ii, 226-7). In 1803 he worked in the south transept of York Minster and made stucco birds and a new finial on the canopy of Archbishop de Grey’s monument (York Minster Library, Fabric Rolls and Bills, E3, E4A). He returned to York in 1814 to repair the screen. At Southwell Minster, Notts, he made good the damaged sedilia and pulpitum and, at Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, repaired the canopy over a statue of Cardinal Wolsey. He also modelled a plaque, with an ostrich and a wreath of oak leaves, which was cast in artificial stone by the Coade Factory of Lambeth for the pediment of a lodge designed by Samuel Wyatt at Holkham Hall, Norfolk (1).
Bernasconi was recorded at 8 Queen Ann Street East, Marylebone in 1803-4 (Marylebone Rate Books, 1803-4/Reel 30, Westminster City Archives), but lived at Alfred Place, Tottenham Court Road, London from 1806 until his death. He had experienced financial difficulties in the early years of the century but died a wealthy man on 1 January 1841, leaving an estate of £90,000.
EH
Literary References: Allen II, 1828-31, 284; Willis and Clark II, 1886, 147, 497, 667; Hiscock 1946, 206; Gunnis 1968, 51; Beard 1975, passim (list of decorative plasterwork, 205-6); Aylmer 1977, 463; Beard 1981, 246; Frew 1984, 684; RG/JP, 1, 151; Grove 29, 1996, 834 (Beard); Sullivan 2019, 303-4
Archival References: GPC
Will: PROB 11/1940, proved 10 February 1841 (Francis Bernasconi): PROB 11/1885 (Peter Bernasconi, plasterer of 178 Tottenham Court Road, proved 21 October 1837)