When I worked for the European olfactory heritage project Odeuropa, I came up with the idea to create a scent wheel based on olfactory iconographies (paintings with narratives that include smell, such as the three Magi with their frankincense and myrrh, or Mary of Magdalen with her jar of spikenard). I was inspired by a feature on Europeana in which one could select a colour, which would lead the user to paintings that contain that very same colour. The surprise element was what made this so compelling to use. And I wondered: what if a smell could do the same? A painting with Napoleon, who amply used eau de Cologne, could then be linked to a bathing scene by Bonnard in which a woman uses the same scent. A spicy scent could lead one from a scene with a merchant to a Bestiary in which a panther’s breath is described as such. I elaborated on the wheel a bit and added some more categories that include Impressionist and classic modern art. It is not encyclopedic but a good starting point to train your olfactory gaze or include smells in your museum practice.
How to read the wheel
The inner ring contains scent categories, the one in the middle specific scents, and the outer ring specific themes or even specific paintings containing that smell. Every colour block unites art works that visually have very little in common, but that contain the same (imaginary) smell.
Nose-first art historical scent wheel. Concept: Caro Verbeek/ Odeuropa, based on research by Caro Verbeek and Lizzie Marx and with the help of Sofia Ehrich. If you would like to use it, use this caption please and add the article below.
Please also see:
Ehrich, Verbeek, Marx, Leemans, Bembibre, Zinnen, et al, “Nose-First, Towards an Olfactory Gaze for Digital Art HIstory”, 2021, https://research.vu.nl/en/publications/nose-first-towards-an-olfactory-gaze-for-digital-art-history
Futurist Scents 