The Art of Fragrance Takes On New Meaning in Exhibitions

Art exhibitions, increasingly, can let you follow your nose.

That is the case with “Leonardo da Vinci and Perfumes of the Renaissance,” which is being shown on the grounds of the Château du Clos Lucé. The stately red brick building in the Loire Valley was the polymath’s last home before he died in 1452.

The exhibit artfully interweaves the life trajectories of da Vinci and his mother Caterina, of which was little was known until a recent discovery by Carlo Vecce, one of the curators. On display are paintings, sculpture, fashion and technology, as well as raw olfactive ingredients and fragrances from the Renaissance reconstructed by five Givaudan perfumers that give an added dimension.

Caroline Fabrigas, chief executive officer of Scent Marketing Inc., says a fragranced exhibition “creates a memorable experience. If you’re deeply involved in the exhibit, that air becomes endemic to the experience. It’s the icing on the cake that pulls it all together.”

Pascal Brioist, the da Vinci exhibit’s second curator, who is professor of modern history at the University of Tours and a member of the Center for Advanced Renaissance Studies, hadn’t had perfume in mind from the outset.

“In 2019, a journalist asked me if Leonardo had written about fragrances,” he says. “First, I was a bit skeptical.”

But then Brioist checked and found numerous elements, especially while talking with Vecce, professor of Italian literature at the University of Naples L’Orientale.

“To speak about Leonardo and fragrances, I had to do something that would be multisensorial,” Brioist says. “But it was not enough to work on the 10 to 15 [perfume] recipes written by Leonardo. You had to contextualize that.”

Fragrances wind their way through da Vinci’s mother’s history, too. Catarina is now believed to have been born in Circassia, in the North Caucasus highlands, as the daughter of a warrior prince named Yacov. Rare animal and plant essences, such as musk, aloe, camphor and ambergris, from far-flung places like Central Asia, the Middle East and Africa, were occasionally brought there by merchants.

To get a literal sense of this, visitors at the Clos Lucé can smell olfactive ingredients such as rosebuds, gum tragacanth, camphor, benzoin resin and cloves, plus civet and frankincense accords. (Notes derived from animals are forbidden today, so must be recreated with different notes.)

Catarina was captured around 1439 and sold into slavery in Constantinople, which was imbued with odors of cinnamon, pepper, myrrh, hyssop and incense. Illustrating this are brass and alabaster censers.

Next, Catarina was moved to Venice, where East meets West, and aristocrats’ gloves were impregnated with fragrance by muschieri. Exhibition visitors can sniff a Damask rose accord, which was used for medicinal properties as well as perfume-making. Perfumer Rodrigo Flores-Roux created a scent evoking Venice, with city and sea smells, to be sampled. So, too, can labdanum, nutmeg, black pepper, cinnamon, storax, myrrh and mace.

Catarina was freed by her lover Piero da Vinci, Leonardo’s father. Leonardo da Vinci and his mother arrived in Florence from Vinci, Italy, when he as a young teen left behind odors of the Tuscan countryside, such as jasmine, rosemary and olive trees, for a world of aromas including perfumed clothes, ink, lead, wax, lemons and oranges.

To wit: visitors can take in whiffs of an orange blossom accord; perfumer Calice Becker’s evocation of a Tuscan landscape, and a Vinci olive oil accord.

Around 1555, Giovanventura Rosetti’s “Notandissimi secreti de l’arte profumatoria” treatise on perfume-making came out. Its recipes included for perfumed resins, which were molded into bird shapes, serving as censors. There is one sniffable here.

Da Vinci in the 1480s set up his own workshop, where he designed alembic apparatuses (one of his sketches is on display) to tests oils, varnishes and citrus-scented fragrances. Turpentine, rabbit skin glue, walnut oil and a linseed olive oil accord are available to smell. He also tinkered with the enfleurage and distillation fragrance extraction methods.

In his “Codex Atlanticus,” da Vinci writes: “Add peeled almonds together with the flowers of bitter orange, jasmine, privet or other fragrant flowers and change the water each time you have to change the flowers, so that the almonds do not take on a musty smell. Solvents. Remove the ammonia.”

Lemon and orange alcholate accords are samplable.

Da Vinci joined the Sforza court in Milan in 1482. Milanese nobility then were keen on the latest perfume trends and fragranced attire down to their shoes with scented pastes comprised of amber, musk and civet. Aloeswood, benzoin, jasmine and musk can be tested out.

Some of da Vinci’s paintings refer to fragrances. In “Lady With an Ermine,” attributed to him, for instance, Cecilia Gallerani wears a black amber necklace. This exhibit reveals its olfactive element.

“What is black amber? We are not too sure about that,” muses Brioist, explaining it might be a version of ambergris or a mixture of other elements. Fashioning black amber beads posed another conundrum, but the curators were up to the challenge. A black amber necklace — in real life — hangs in front of the artwork’s reproduction.

“I think Leonardo had a synesthetic ability,” Brioist says. “For instance, he said nut oil smells sad.” Da Vinci was known to compare smells with musical chords, too.

Elsewhere, from a Renaissance recipe, perfumer Nadège Le Garlantezec adopted sweet-smelling water that was sprinkled on to clothes and linens. Also bringing the Court of Francis I to life are a violet scent and fragranced sachets reconstituted by Océane Fontaine Cioffi.

“Leonardo da Vinci and the Perfumes of the Renaissance” runs through Sept. 15.

Brioist had previously used an olfactive element in an exhibition to help illustrate Renaissance battlefield.

Other museums have been using scents for exhibits, including the Museum of London Docklands. For the British Library’s upcoming exhibition “Medieval Women: In Their Own Words,” running Oct. 25 to March 2, scent designer Tasha Marks was commissioned to develop four immersive fragrance installations. Two scents are based on recipes from the 13th-century text “De Ornatu Mulierum,” or “On Women’s Cosmetics,” for a hair fragrance and breath freshener. Two other scents nod to medieval understanding of the heavenly and demonic.

In the U.S., “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion,” opened its doors at the Metropolitan Museum in New York on May 10 to much fanfare following the annual Met Gala and runs through Sept. 2.

“You can access the olfactory histories of several garments and accessories [and] smell the ghostly remains of Paul Poiret’s perfume La Rose de Rosine embedded in a dress worn by his wife and muse,” says Andrew Bolton, chief curator in charge of the Costume Institute at the Met.

Scent specialist Sissel Tolaas also derived scent molecules from the clothes of heiress Millicent Rogers to “reveal Millicent’s personal olfactory imprint — her distinct smellscape — derived not only from her choice of fragrance, but also from her natural body odors as well as her singular habits and lifestyle, including what she ate, drank and smoked,” Bolton says.

“Environmental scenting is really an expression of values in the air. For an art exhibit, you’re expressing the emotions, the mood and the feelings of the artist,” Fabrigas says of Scent Marketing, which has fragranced a variety of hotels, museums and spas globally.

In the case of museums specifically, she says: “When it’s done best, it’s sheer and subtle. It’s invisible, soundless and doesn’t detract from anything. It’s just incredibly additive, and so sensual and necessary for us as humans, it has only become more and more important.”