New Delhi: The Prado Museum in Madrid, Spain, seeks to connect painting and the sense of smell. The museum is planning an exhibition that incorporates scent to enhance the experience of 17th-century paintings.
The Essence of Painting: An Exhibition of the Sense of Smell
sense of smellPaintings by Jan Brueghel and Peter Paul Rubens are on display in Room 83 of the Villanueva building until July 3, 2022, and are the focus of the “The Essence of Painting: The Smell Exhibition”. In addition to admiring oil paintings, you can also enjoy 10 different scents inspired by oil paintings.
The painting was curated by Alejandro Vergara, chief curator of the Prado Museum, and Gregorio Sola, Puig’s senior perfumer and member of the Perfume Academy, the museum said in a statement. Sola created ten of his fragrances related to elements of 17th century paintings. Barcelona-based fashion and fragrance business Puig has launched AirParfum, which allows you to enjoy up to 100 fragrances without straining your sense of smell, while respecting the identity and different notes of each perfume. We have developed a special technology called.
“The Essence of Painting: The Smell Exhibition” represents a new approach to the Prado Museum’s collection through the sense of smell, the statement said.
sense of smell painting
sense of smell This painting is part of the “Five Senses” series created by Jan Brueghel in 1617 and 1618. The five senses are sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch.
The allegorical figures that appear in this series were painted by Bruegel’s friend Rubens.
Bruegel’s works sense of smell It brings out the garden of rare trees and plants that belonged to King Clara Eugenia, monarch of the Low Countries and the Spanish Netherlands in modern-day northern France, and her husband, Archduke Albert VII of Austria, in early 17th-century Brussels. Brueghel worked for them as a court painter.
It is said that Princess Clara and Albert of Austria commissioned a series on “The Five Senses”.
According to the Prado Museum’s website, Brueghel’s works depict more than 80 species of plants and flowers, various animals related to the sense of smell, such as the scent of hounds and civets, and various objects related to the world of perfumery. It is said that there is. .
Objects include scented gloves, containers containing scented substances, perfume burners heated in fancy braziers, and vessels for distilling essences.
Exotic plants depicted sense of smell In northern Europe, paintings had to be kept in greenhouses during the winter.
In this painting, the figures of Venus and Cupid stand out in the midst of an orchard filled with a variety of flowers: lilies, roses, holly, and tulips.
This painting consists of an “allegory of smells” depicting a female figure. She personifies her allegory as a woman, the museum explained in a video.
She is with a little cupid boy who is giving her a bouquet of flowers. The painting also depicts an African civet cat, whose glandular secretions were once used in luxury perfumes. Sola explained in the video that no animals were harmed when creating the scents associated with the elements in the painting.
10 scents you can smell at the exhibition
Visitors to the exhibition can experience the various elements depicted in the paintings through their sense of smell.
To achieve this, perfumer Sora created a selection of “Allegory”, “Globe”, “Fig Tree”, “Orange Blossom”, “Jasmine”, “Rose”, “Iris”, “Daffodil”, We have created 10 different fragrances, including “Spikenard.” ”.
According to the museum, the fragrance “Allegory” invites the viewer to focus on a small bouquet of flowers held in the right hand of an allegorical figure. The ingredients of this perfume are rose, jasmine, and carnation.
The fragrance Gloves uses a recipe from 1696 to recreate the scent of ambergris-scented gloves. Composed of resin, balm, wood and flower essences with a suede scent.
“Fig Tree” is a perfume inspired by the moist scent of greenery felt under the refreshing shade of a fig tree on a summer day.
Neroli is an essential oil distilled from orange blossoms and used in perfumes. The scent of “orange blossom” wafts through the exhibition.
The fragrance “Jasmine” is made by soaking jasmine flowers in a fatty volatile liquid, which concentrates the aromatic components of the flowers.
The scent of “Jasmine” is delicate yet strong.
The “Rose” perfume is a fresh, floral, velvety and intense fragrance with green facets and a slight fruity touch, combined with spicy notes and a hint of honey.
It takes 300,000 roses, picked early in the morning, to obtain one kilogram of essence.
Bruegel depicted eight types of roses in his paintings.
To make daffodil perfume, daffodil flowers are poured with a volatile solvent for solvent extraction. “Daffodil” has a strong and intoxicating unique aroma that combines subtle hints of apricot and peach with background notes of leather, olive, flowers and hay.
Spikenard is an aromatic herb native to India. Due to the power and intensity of spikenard, its essence in perfumes accentuates the character of other floral notes present.
What is unique about the Prado Museum?
According to a report on art market website Artnet, Vergara said the Prado Museum exhibition is unique because it positions sensory elements in a way that evokes the allegorical power of painting.
“All I was really trying to do was call attention to the sense of joy that these pieces create within me and hope that others could see and smell this as well.” Vergara said.
In a video released by the Prado Museum, Vergara said that when people come to see an exhibition, they are opening a window, a door, to another culture. He added that this is a kind of learning process and one of the most enjoyable things in life.
