Jasmine, ambergris, orange blossom...visitors can breathe in the heady scents represented in a 17th-century garden scene painting in this fresh exhibition.

On display until July 3 at the Prado in Madrid, The Sense of Smell, a painting by Jan Brueghel and Peter Paul Rubens, is the focus of The Essence of a Painting: An Olfactory Exhibition. This sensory experience features ten fragrances associated with elements in the painting.

The Sense of Smell, part of the series on “The Five Senses” executed by Jan Brueghel in 1617 and 1618, includes allegorical figures painted by his friend Rubens.

Brueghel’s work, which evokes the garden of rare trees and plants belonging to Isabel Clara Eugenia and her husband in early 17th-century Brussels, depicts more than 80 species of plants and flowers, as well as various animals associated with the sense of smell, such as the scent hound and civet, and a range of objects relating to the world of perfume, including scented gloves, vessels holding fragrant substances, a perfume burner warmed in a sumptuous brazier, and vessels for distilling essences.

The Perfume Academy Foundation collborated with Puig, using its “AirParfum” technology to create scents to draw visitors into different details depicted in the painting. Fragrances such as “Allegory” encourages viewers to focus on the small bouquet of flowers which the allegorical figure is smelling; “Gloves” reproduces the smell of gloves scented with ambergris, based on a formula of 1696; “Fig Tree” leads viewers to spot the tree in the painting; and “Orange Blossom” directs the gaze towards the distillation process used to obtain the plant extract. 

The exhibition was curated by Alejandro Vergara, Chief Curator of Flemish Painting and the Northern Schools at the Museo Nacional del Prado, and Gregorio Sola, Senior Perfumer at Puig and an academician of the Perfume Academy.

Video of the exhibition on the official YouTube channel of the Museo Nacional del Prado: https://youtu.be/0toAIMOfb5Y