The News
A new exhibition catalog spotlights Leonardo da Vinci’s under-appreciated fascination with smell.
From inventing flying machines to designing a city with features that were centuries ahead of his time, the Italian polymath’s many interests embodied the spirit of the Renaissance — including his obsession with perfumery. Leonardo da Vinci and the Perfumes of the Renaissance traces the influence of scent on da Vinci’s work, which saw him devise recipes for fragrances and draw “technological sketches for alembic distillation mechanisms,” Hyperallergic wrote.
In doing so, it recreates an 15th-century olfactory world that was both sumptuous and putrid, with myrrh, cinnamon, and musk sold in cities dominated by the stench of overcrowding, disease, and decay.