face each other Finally smile again without having to squint. Make up the lips bright red. The masks fall, the faces are back. That’s wonderful, but nothing against: finally smelling again.
Our sense of smell has had a particularly tough time during the pandemic. Not just because the pandemic turned him off when he was sick. It is unthinkable that people would have blindfolded themselves or blocked their ears for two years. Seeing and hearing are particularly noble senses, as Aristotle believed. Our noses, on the other hand, are so far down in the hierarchy of sensory organs that it is hardly noticeable how we have largely dispensed with their impressions because they are wrapped in particle-filtering fleece layers.
The end of the mask requirement promises a real sensory intoxication. Nowhere is this more impressive than at the moment in Madrid’s Prado. Current incidence 166 in the city? China before the next lockdowns? gift.
The museum, which owns all five allegories of the senses that Jan Brueghel the Elder painted together with Peter Paul Rubens in 1617 and 1618, is dedicating a separate exhibition to the allegory of smell this spring. It is an exhibition to smell – and an invitation to the new, mask-free age.
“The essence of a painting” is the name of the olfactory symphony that visitors can experience in a room in the Flemish painting department. Their composition was more complicated than the almost inconspicuous hall would suggest. The five sensory allegories hang here in front of a dark background: seeing, hearing, tasting, touching – and at the end of the room the sense of smell. You could almost overlook the four black machines that look a bit like HAL 9000, the malicious computer from Kubrick’s “A Space Odyssey”. It’s hard to believe that there’s an orgy of scents to be experienced here. But as is so often the case, the complexity of the sense of smell is underestimated.
One thing is clear to the researchers: Brueghel wanted people to be able to smell his work
For months, scientists from Spain’s largest research institute CSIC have been busy identifying around 80 species that Brueghel arranged in the garden of the Spanish Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia in Brussels. The regent’s garden was famous at the time: she collected exotic plants and had perfume made from them. The researchers’ work now suggests that Brueghel developed his pictorial composition not only according to optical but also according to olfactory criteria. The painter wanted people to smell his work.
For today’s viewer a sheer overload. The exhibition organizers are of course aware of the stunted synaesthetic imagination and therefore make it easier for visitors to actually experience the painting through their nose.
They gambled high: the months of work would have been as good as in vain. It was only last week that masks were compulsory in Spain. After 699 days, it was now possible to visit the Prado unmasked for the first time. At least in theory. Because many Spaniards still don’t really like theirs mascarilla separate. The fragrance exhibition is a gentle temptation, especially for those who are still skeptical: Let the covers fall off!
Jan Brueghel the Elder painted the Allegory of Smell together with Peter Paul Rubens in 1617 and 1618.
(Photo: Otero Herranz, Alberto/Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado)
The Spaniards wore the face masks for almost two years with almost Prussian discipline. No protruding noses on the subway, almost no self-made cloth rags. The blue surgical mask was part of the basic equipment for everyone over the age of five. For months, masks were even compulsory outdoors. And the Spaniards stuck to it – even when they were out jogging in the park early in the morning.
That’s over, according to the political announcement. But in Spain there is no Freedom Day pathos to be felt, rather there is talk of “sindrome de cara vacía”, the syndrome of the empty face, which according to relevant media reports mainly affects Spain’s teenagers, who with the mask their complexes, pimples or Braces covered and now feel naked and at the mercy of strangers.
70 percent of Spaniards want to continue wearing their mascarilla
Beyond any scientifically proven protective effect, the mask has become a kind of talisman for many Spaniards. With her, they felt above all immune. So it’s no wonder that many are not yet ready to part ways. Across all party lines, 54 percent of Spaniards believe it is too early to take off the masks. 70 percent want to carry them on, at least when shopping, in the cinema or at a concert. In any case, they remain mandatory on public transport.
In any case, in the Prado that afternoon, the Spanish visitors can be distinguished quite clearly from the foreign tourists by their masks. Only in the hall with the fragrance exhibition do they also lift them mascarilla. It’s just too seductive.
Curator Alejandro Vergara, together with Spanish perfumer Gregorio Sola, selected ten of the scents of the lush painting. Sola has created scents from them, not all of them are as lovely as that of the fig tree in the background or the bouquet of carnations, roses and jasmine that Rubens’ Venus holds under her nose. The civet cat curled up on the ground in front of her smells strongly of wild animal. Their scent comes from glandular sacs between their hind legs. In Brueghel’s time, the secretion was used as a fixative for perfumes.
It is better to ignore the fact that the civet has recently made headlines as a host animal for the Sars virus. Just like the aerosols that presumably fill the exhibition room to the ceiling. After all, you are here for the rush of the senses. So you approach one of the four black devices on the side wall of the hall. On the screen you tap on narcissus, rose or orange blossom and then approach your nose to a glowing red ring that blows a small cloud of fragrance into your nostrils with a quiet hum.
“AirParfum” is the name of the technology of these diffusers, thanks to which one can supposedly distinguish individual notes perfectly. The presentation of the noble essences turns out to be rather despicable.
Neither the mechanical hum nor the mundane touchscreen detract from the fragrance experience itself. All you have to do is close your eyes. Then the scent does the rest. It’s as if the sinuses are suddenly free again after a long cold. Breathe and smell, smell and breathe. There it is, the luminous garden, in the middle of the dark hall.
This garden isn’t going away anytime soon
Fragrances vanish. But surprisingly, this garden does not disappear again so quickly. That’s what’s really magical about the exhibition. Smell has one property that makes it special: it lasts longer than other sensory impressions. It is not for nothing that the scent is considered the seat of memories, it is not for nothing that Proust takes the scent of linden blossom tea and Madeleine as the starting point for a whole journey through time, which wants nothing more than to break the dominance of the sense of sight.
In the fragrance exhibition in Madrid there is also a parable of our present. As the philosopher Byung-Chul Han once put it in an essay on the art of lingering: “Information has no scent. That’s where it differs from history.” After two years of staring at contagion numbers and infection curves replacing smelling, it’s time for us to transform back from just seeing. It will take a little practice. You can get a taste of this new, old time in the Prado. But spring flowers bloom elsewhere too.
The Essence of a Painting. An Olfactory Exhibition, Museo del Prado, Madrid. Until July 3, 2022.