A coleção Marciano Azuaga: Gaia e Porto na segunda metade do século XIX e primeira década do século XX

Marciano Azuaga (1838-1905), born in Valença, Minho, came to Vila Nova de Gaia due to the arrival of the railroad at Devesas, in 1864. During his life, this station chief and amateur collector gathered an eclectic set of 1865 objects, which he donated to the Town Hall of Vila Nova de Gaia in 1904, at a time when it was already configurated as a private museum, open to the public free of charge. This article contextualizes the collection’s creation and demonstrate how such a process enlightens about the intellectual orientations of the most dominant figures of scientific, artistic, literary, political and academic production with whom Marciano Azuaga was in contact. These composed an illustrated society which flowed through Gaia and Porto’s institutions and intimate circles, which are highlighted in the text. The collection’s inventory, produced in 1904 (which accompanied the collection’s donation and would serve as a register for future offers until 1934), is regarded as an indispensable source which allows us not only to recreate the collection but also know some of its donors, who were recorded until 1909. If the apparent diversity and eclecticism of the objects suggests a collection motivated by the collector´s taste, the typologies of objects contemplated and their respective donors, reveal a positivist sensibility of knowledge and collecting that corroborates the characterisation presented of this society and its impact over the objects gathered by the collector. The inventory’s study, combined with a biographical approach to the collector and some of the collection’s donors, as well as other contemporary sources and journals regarding institutions and events in which they participated, were the main resources used to cross data and demonstrate the social, economic, professional and geographical circumstances which propitiated the collection’s constitution