Study of the Baroque Furniture of the Esteva Pharmacy in Llívia (17th-18th centuries)
Funding Entity
Llívia Museum
Period
May 2022-October 2022
Researcher: Dr. Adrià Vázquez Vives
Director: Dr. Joan Bosch Ballbona (technical director of the ICRPC and full professor of History of Modern Art at the University of Girona) and Dr. Francesc Miralpeix Vilamala (full professor of History of Modern Art at the University of Girona and researcher attached to the ICRPC).
Description
The project carried out is part of the agreement signed between the Catalan Institute for Research in Cultural Heritage and the Municipal Museum of Llívia consisting of the research and analysis of the entire former Esteva Pharmacy in Llívia.
The Municipal Museum of Llívia preserves the modern period furniture from the pharmacy run by the Esteva family from the first third of the 18th century until 1926. On the one hand, a set of twenty-seven polychrome boxes by an unknown artist stands out, which presents a unique iconography with the portraits of figures of saints and other historical figures. On the other hand, two Baroque cordials are preserved, one from the Llívia pharmacy, and the other from the Martí pharmacy in Puigcerdà. Both have been attributed to the workshop of the sculptors Josep and Pau Sunyer, and are placed in an approximate chronology of the first third of the 18th century, coinciding with the regency of the family's first apothecary, Jaume Esteva Sala.
The study consisted of the historical and artistic analysis of the set (carpentry, sculpture, polychromy, etc.) and the description of the pieces, in order to provide new reflections on these objects and present some data that allow refining their historical and artistic analysis.
The result of this research has allowed the addition of new documentary references that reinforce some hypotheses about the origin of that establishment, as well as other unpublished information about apothecaries and characters linked to health professions, such as druggists, surgeons, or doctors of medicine, which will serve to explain the historical context of the Esteva pharmacy in Cerdanya at the beginning of the 18th century.
Methodology
The research methodology has consisted of developing several tasks in parallel. First of all, the graphic documentation of the pieces preserved in the museum and the bibliographical compilation around the furniture set. And secondly, the archival research, fundamentally carried out in the Cerdanya Regional Archive, and focused on the notarial collection preserved there. A search has been made in other archives such as those of Perpignan (Departmental Archives of the Eastern Pyrenees) and Barcelona (Historical Archive of Protocols of Barcelona), with the aim of locating apothecaries' inventories from the same chronology in order to make a comparison with pharmacy shops from the same period.
These tasks have been complemented, of course, with the study of the iconography represented in these objects?mainly in the polychrome boxes?, as well as the description of all the elements that make up this set.
Bibliography generated
VÁZQUEZ VIVES, Adrià (2023). “La farmàcia Esteva de Llívia i el conjunt moble d’època moderna (s. XVII-XVIII)”. ERA, revista cerdana de recerca, núm. 5. (edició en curs).
Institut Català de Recerca en
Patrimoni Cultural ICRPC
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