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An excerpt from Leonardo da Vinci’s Codex Atlanticus entitled “Floral composition, views on the usefulness of glasses”
© Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana / Metis e Mida Informatica / Mondadori Portfolio
Leonardo da Vinci was a true Renaissance man: artist, scientist, inventor and scent connoisseur. Although his olfactory fascinations are not as well known as his other works, scent was one of Leonardo’s many sources of inspiration.
“Leonardo da Vinci and the perfumes of the Renaissance”, an exhibition in the Château du Clos Lucé in Amboise, France, takes visitors on a fragrant journey through the famous Mona Lisa painter’s life, with an emphasis on the scents of Europe and beyond.
The show opens in Constantinople, where Leonardo’s young mother, Caterina, may have been enslaved in the 15th century, according to a statement from Château du Clos Lucé. Caterina’s story is one divisive topic among scientists, and one of the curators of the exhibition, Carlo Vecce, made headlines last year for his research related to this theory.
Arance, lime, limoni and lumieBartolommeo Bimbi, 1715 © Gabinetto fotografico Uffizi Gallery, Florence
As such, the first room explores the many uses of perfume in the Byzantine capital, where the markets smell strongly of spices such as myrrh, cinnamon, pepper and musk. Based on Vecce’s research, the show follows Caterina’s travels from Constantinople to Venice; original Venetian perfume recipe books are on display in the second room. The third room focuses on the scents of Leonardo’s birthplace: Tuscany.
“The sensory world of Leonardo’s childhood is evoked here by plants and trees typical of Tuscany and of the Florentine gardens: lemon trees, orange trees, olive trees,” the statement said. “His relatively free-spirited upbringing in the heart of the Tuscan countryside undoubtedly led to Leonardo’s interest in nature and in the study of flowers and plants, which inspired his research into ways to extract their scents.”
As a scientist, Leonardo was intrigued by perfumes, “comparing the machinations of smell to those of sight and hearing,” as Artnet‘ writes Tim Brinkhof. He purchased perfumes common in 15th century Italy – many made from oils, fats and flowers – and recorded their components. His fascination with smell is reflected in the enormous volumes of his writings and drawings in which he documented methods of fragrance extraction and distillation.
A pomander ball that opens to reveal eight compartments for storing spices © GrandPalaisRmn (National Museum of the Renaissance, Château d’Écouen) / Jean-Gilles Berizzi
“Add the flowers of sweet orange, jasmine, privet or other fragrant flowers and change the water every time you need to change the flowers so that the almonds do not take on the musty smell,” Leonardo noted in Codex Atlanticus. He wrote inside Codex Forster“Remove that yellow surface that covers oranges and distill them in an alembic until we can say that the distillation is perfect.”
In the 15th century, scents were widely distributed via perfume burnersand the scents “also served as an air freshener that masked the ubiquitous odor of unpleasant odors,” according to Artnet.
By Leonardo da Vinci Lady with an ermine (1489) depicts Cecilia Gallerani, a mistress of the Duke of Milan.
It was also believed that scents ward off diseases. Around this time, medical professionals “saw the human body as porous and therefore susceptible to penetration of plague-tainted air,” as French historian Robert Muchembled wrote in his 2020 book. Smells: a cultural history of smells in the early modern period. Blocking unpleasant odors was thought to be an effective preventative measure.
Fragrances were also applied to the skin or clothing. Sometimes they were distributed through tools such as the pomandera decorative metal ball that opened to reveal perfumed objects. Visitors to the exhibition can see examples of these objects, which are on loan from the National Museum of the Renaissance in Écouen, France.
They can also ‘smell’ the subject of one of Leonardo’s most famous portraits, Lady with an ermine (1489). Experts have created a replica of the woman’s scented black amber necklace for the exhibition.
The Château du Clos Lucé is a fitting home for the show, as it was also Leonardo’s last residence. That was him invited to Amboise in 1516 by the French king Francis Iwho had heard stories about the versatile Italian. About three years later, Leonardo donated his notebooks and sketches to his student, Francesco Melziand died in his room in the manor on May 2, 1519.
“Leonardo da Vinci and the perfumes of the Renaissance” is on view through September 15 at Château du Clos Lucé in Amboise, France.
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