The Croatian Museum of Medicine and Pharmacy houses a collection of portraits of Croatian pharmacists. This valuable museum material originates from the pharmaceutical-historical collection founded in Zagreb in 1937, which later grew into the collection of the Institute for the History of Pharmacy, or the so-called “Pharmaceutical Museum”. The Institute was founded in 1951 by Hrvoje Tartalja, the first professional historian of pharmacy in Croatia, who managed to collect a significant amount of historical material from Croatian pharmacies, and used the collection in teaching the history of pharmacy at the Faculty of Pharmacy and Biochemistry in Zagreb. As the Institute for the History of Pharmacy was integrated into the Division of the History of Medical Sciences of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts in the 1960s, the Division took care of the collection until the establishment of the Museum in 2014.

The collection contains nine portraits of Croatian pharmacists who were at certain times the heads of the Croatian Pharmaceutical Association: Anton Ernest Katkić, owner of the Kaptol Pharmacy of St. Mary, Josip Grahovac and Slavko Zimmermann, owners of the Sveti Duh Pharmacy at Ilica 12, Otto Löschner, owner of the K angjelu Pharmacy in the Pharmacy House building, today Masarykova 2, Žiga Ključec, owner of the K crnom orlu Pharmacy in the Upper Town (all in Zagreb) and Dragutin Jelinek, owner of the K svetoj Mariji Pharmacy in Delnice. All of the above portraits, including a self-portrait, were painted in the period from 1908 to 1935 by Hinko Brodjovin (1864–1941), a prominent Zagreb pharmacist, owner of the K Zrinjskomu Royal Pharmacy at the corner of Zrinjevac and today’s Teslina Street in Zagreb (1894–1928). From 1895 he was a councilor, and from 1903 to 1908 he was the head of the Croatian-Slavonian Provincial Pharmacy Association. In his free time he painted and collected artworks. At the beginning of the 20th century he attended the private painting school of Oton Iveković.

The collection is particularly notable for the recently discovered Portrait of Pharmacist Hinko Brodjovin, a work by the prominent Croatian painter Milivoj Uzelac.

Restored portraits of Croatian pharmacists from the collection of the Croatian Museum of Medicine and Pharmacy were presented to the public at an exhibition in the Klovićevi dvori Gallery in Zagreb in June 2024. https://hmmf.hazu.hr/portraits-of-croatian-pharmacists/?lang=en

The virtual collection is available via the link: https://dizbi.hazu.hr/?pc=i&id=2720264