From Vermeer to Botticelli: 7 fragrances dedicated to masterpieces
Text: Ksenia Golovanova, author of the Telegram channel Nose Republic
In the language of smell often talk about the movie, music, painting, about literary characters and real historical personalities. Perfume critic Ksenia Golovanova gathered for us seven flavors, invented based on the masterpieces of painting, known and not the most obvious.
"Spring" Sandro Botticelli was the wedding gift of Lorenzo Medici, a great patron of the arts, second cousin of Lorenzino. The plot corresponds to the event: in the middle of the orange grove stands the goddess of love and beauty Venus, she is surrounded by other deities of all sorts of pleasant things - art, spring, grace, and so on. We see Zephyr, who gave the name to the fragrance, in the upper right corner - he treacherously steals the naked nymph Chloris, using his own aerodynamic advantage: Zephyr works as the god of the western wind and therefore flies beautifully.
According to mythology, the westerly wind is spring, warm, caressing and fragrant; Zephiro turned out to be the same - spicy tuberose with an intense animal tone and camphor green. And here's some more news: Esterence Onyrico is carrying a new fragrance Artemitia dedicated to Artemisia Gentileschi, the most important Italian artist of the 17th century, authored by the most chilling "Judith decapitating Oloferna" in art history, for the Milan perfumery exhibition.
Bella Donna of the popular Italian perfumer Luca Maffei is inspired by one of Da Vinci’s most famous paintings, the Beautiful Ferroniera. The stranger in the portrait got her nickname due to the decoration on her forehead (such tapes with a rosette of precious stones are called “feronnieres”). Art critics are still unable to accurately identify the model, although they are inclined to Cecilia Gallerani, one of the beloved of the Duke of Milan, Lodovico Sforza, and Davinchiev’s Lady with an Ermine.
The main theme of Bella Donna - the magnolia - is also easy to take for something else, for example, for the dense (and carnal) chord of tuberose and jasmine, highlighted in a museum way by ginger and golden citrus; these are beautiful white flowers that sound more contemporary than you would expect from a masterpiece from Renaissance hopping. By the way: now "Ferronera" is exhibited in the branch of the Louvre in Abu Dhabi, which opened a few months ago.
Au bord de l'eau
L'artisan parfumeur
8700 rub.
for 100 ml
Claude Monet wrote "On the banks of the Seine" in 1868, when the very concept of "impressionism" did not exist yet - it will appear five years later with the famous landscape "Impression. The Rising Sun", the program work of the new artistic movement. Back in the late 1860s, Monet and his wife Camilla - the woman in the picture - were poor and unknown: for example, the couple could not even pay for the inn (its building is reflected in the river), in which she lived for several weeks.
But already at this time Monet was on the threshold of a great discovery: an open-air, everyday story, fast, as if broken strokes, transmitting a play of light - all these signs of impressionism are in the “Seine”. The same idea of fluidity and impermanence, sun ripples on the water - no, trembles - at the heart of the Au Bord de L'Eau, dedicated to the picture of the same name: here the citrus shine is replaced by a deep grass shadow of violet and rosemary.
Lily of the valley
Floris
6500 rub.
for 50 ml
On the official Floris website, their famous lily of the valley, Lily of the Valley, is one of the best in its genre - it is called a dedication to John Singer Sargent, or rather his picture "Carnation, lily, lily, rose". True, the American artist worked on it in 1885-1886, and the English "Lily of the Valley" came out four decades earlier - which is not so important because these works, not meeting in time, coincide in the main, that is, in aesthetics.
The garden, painted by Sargent, is dressed in white, green and pink, the same shades are basic in the Lily of the Valley palette, assembled from lilies of the valley, roses and grass, and the emerald shadow, rising towards the girls in the picture, lies in the depths of the "Lily of the valley" - forest violet with galbanum.
“The beautiful monster” is a sphinx from a picture by Franz von Stuck, a prominent representative of the German modernist style: a half-half-half-arm hugs the clawed paws of a naked man, ready to perish for the sake of a single kiss. In the animal and human struggle, on which the drama of the fragrance is built, the animal expectedly wins: powerful animalica (leather, castoreum, cibetin) effortlessly crushes the fragile iris flower in his fist.
Once we already wrote about Onder de Linde of the Netherlands indie-brand Baruti - in a text about scents inspired by childhood. Since then, nothing has changed: Vermeer's "Thrush" still expires with golden light in the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum, and her perfume avatar is still beautiful - linden, lilac and pollen hanging in a thick cloud in the spring air. In Moscow, the Baruti flavors are not yet sold, at least officially - they will have to order on the brand’s website, but they are already in Kursk (Perfume Art boutique), in Sochi (Allure), in Penza (“House of the perfumer”) and in Khabarovsk (Provence) .
Tubéreuse Manifeste - Cecile Zarokian, the best tuberose in the perfumery career of today, which has grown a whole sea of white flowers with a intoxicating smell - is dedicated to surrealism in painting. For this trend in avant-garde art, several things are characteristic: the bizarre logic of sleep, the primacy of the subconscious over “conscious” thought, the richness of forms and their paradoxical combinations.
Surrealism is a very personal phenomenon, few artistic trends show so shamelessly what is happening in the head of the artist who chose him - and in Tubéreuse Manifeste we see almost a hologram of the creative process of Zarokian, pretty tired of the same requests in the spirit of "make me realistic tuberose. " As a result, it makes tuberose, which does not exist in nature: it inoculates the overripe mango to it, lets the strongest rum along the veins and makes, like Dali - a garnet, growl with a powerful tiger roar.
Photo: Myscent, Make up, TsUM, Strawberry, Cosmotheca, Shy Mimosa, Bumparfum