Leonardo da Vinci, “Lady with an Ermine” (1489–91), oil on wooden panel, 21 x 15 inches (54 x 39 cm) (picture courtesy Nationwide Museum of Krakow)
If William Shakespeare believed that eyes are the home windows to the soul, then how did Leonardo da Vinci regard the nostril? Whereas the Italian polymath has traditionally been related to inventive mastery and scientific ingenuity, lesser identified is his deep fascination with fragrances.
The just lately printed exhibition catalog Leonardo da Vinci and the Perfumes of the Renaissance dives into this largely unexplored aspect of the artist’s life by highlighting his private engagements with fragrance. From Leonardo’s upbringing in Tuscany, the place fragrant vegetation like jasmine and orange blossom thrived within the area’s hilly panorama, to his working house, which was crammed with botanical books and strong-smelling oils, resins, waxes, and fat that have been included into his artwork, Leonardo’s life was teeming with scents that stirred curiosity and influenced different features of his work. The guide itself pulls from the multisensory exhibition of the identical identify curated by historians Carlo Vecce and Pascal Brioist, which ran this previous summer season on the Château du Clos Lucé in Amboise, France, and contextualized Leonardo’s artistry by the historical past of Renaissance perfumes, just like that of the 2018 digital present reexamining South Asian artistry by scent, Bagh-e-Hind.
By way of a mixture of artworks, perfume recipes, and texts by historians and three-dimensional reconstruction consultants, the catalog constructs a timeline that not solely retraces the event of Renaissance scents but additionally their affect on Leonardo and his contemporaries. It begins with Vecce’s declare that the polymath’s mom, Caterina, was an enslaved lady who was trafficked from her dwelling within the Caucasus area to Italy in the course of the spice commerce, introducing scents like cinnamon, myrrh, and musk.
The guide continues to attract connections between Leonardo’s childhood and his work as an grownup, when he diligently copied recipes for perfumes and drew up technological sketches for alembic distillation mechanisms. Quoting his pocket book within the foreword, novelist François Saint-Bris factors out how Leonardo’s experiments allowed him to develop a deep understanding of the connection between coloration and scent. “Note how aqua vitae collects in itself all the colors and scents of the flowers,” the artist wrote. “If you want to make azure, put cornflowers in it; and wild poppies for red.”
Additional teasing out the continuity between Leonardo’s fragrance apply and inventive work, Brioist particulars how the artist’s preoccupation with odors helped affect his technical and architectural designs, from family latrines and horse stables to residential gardens for aristocratic patrons. When Leonardo designed plans for what he perceived because the mannequin metropolis in 1485, he particularly sought to eradicate putrid smells that resulted from overcrowding and poor air flow.
Pomander from Sixteenth-century France (picture courtesy Musée Nationwide de la Renaissance, Écouen)
Leonardo’s obsession with scent could appear a bit intense, however because the essays level out, fragrance (and odors) performed a major function in Renaissance society, the place hygienic practices have been questionable and illness was rampant. One tactic to thrust back illness was the usage of scented clothes and accessories like gloves and sachets, regularly donned by French and Milanese the Aristocracy. Accordingly, essayist Paula Venturelli sheds gentle on Leonardo’s “Lady with an Ermine” (c. 1489–1491), whose topic is proven sporting a black necklace exemplifying the interval’s trendy perfumed paternoster beads, for which the guide even features a recipe that consists of freshly floor bread crumbs, wine, and egg yolk. This recipe will also be used to make fragrant knife handles, and for these with a nostril for perfume, there are even instructions on methods to make “Chypre birdies,” or sculptures fabricated from perfumed paste, and gloves scented with almond oil mixtures and musked rose water. Then once more, contemplating these recipes got here earlier than the arrival of routine bathing and expiration dates, it might be higher to stay to the stuff from the shop.
Bartolomeo Bimbi, “Oranges, Limes, Lemons and Citrus lumia” (1715), oil on canvas, 78 x 101 1/5 inches (198 x 257 cm) (picture courtesy Museo della Natura Morta Villa di Poggio, Caiano)
Barthel Bruyn the Youthful, “Portrait of a Woman of the Slosgin Family of Cologne” (1557), oil on oak, 17 3/4 x 14 1/8 inches (45.1 x 35.9 cm, with the topic holding a small pomander (picture public area by way of the Metropolitan Museum of Artwork)
