My latest hobby is creating scent wheels based on my PhD research into (art) historical scents and vocabularies. We all know how hard it is to describe scents. Other senses and artistic domains allow us speak about the invisible and intangible, in terms of tactile, gustatory and visual phenomena. And surprisingly many of us instantly understand the difference between a cold and a warm scent, between a smooth and a rough one, or even a red or a green smell. And even if there is no consensus, using labels enables us to imagine scents or to ‘olfactorize’ them more easily.
How it works
The inner ring is divided into the external senses of seeing, hearing, touching and tasting and the internal sense called ‘proprioception’ (indicating balance, weight, etc.).
The second ring divides the sensory domains more precisely. For example hearing is divided into music and the more general sound.
In the layer around it, descriptors like ‘blue’ and ‘round’ can be found. I also added some smell related phenomena such as ‘smound’ (smell and sound), invented in the 19th century by Septimus Piesse and ‘Geruchshelligkeit’ or ‘smellbrightness’, a term that was invented in 1932 by Von Hornbostel.
In the outer circle I put references to the literature in which I encountered the descriptors.
Besides helping us to translate scents into language, many of these words indicate that seperating the senses might not be representative of how they are organised in reality. Our senses rarely operate isolatedly and influence one another all the time.
Please enjoy and let me know if you have different categories by sending me a message at caro@caroverbeek.nl
This is some of the literature I used:
Azari, F. (1920), “Milano-Montecarlo in direttissimo Pullman”.
Baudelaire, C. (1857), “Correpondences”.
Carrà, C. (1913), “La pittura dei suoni, rumori, odori”.
Hornbostel, von E.M. (1932), Über Geruchshelligkeit, in Pflugers Arhiv für die Gesamten Physiologie, pp. 517 – 538.
Huxley, A. (1932), Brave New World.
Marinetti, F.T. (1932), “Ritratto olfattivo di una donna”
Marinetti, F.T. (1932), La cucina futurista.
Marinetti, F.T. (1932), “Paesaggio di odori del mio cane-lupo”.
Marinetti , F.T. (1933), F.T. “Teatro totale per masse”, 1933
Montesquiou, R. de (1900), Pays des aromates.
Piesse, S.,The Art of Perfumery, 1857
Sanzin, B. (1942), Fiori d’Italia.
Valentinelli, E. (ca. 1916), “L’arte degli odori”.
Keep on smelling
Watch my Tedx-talk “Inhaling the Past – Smelling the Future” (2016) here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g37Qe8Kriuo
Listen to my interview with Manoush Zomorodi for Ted Radio Hour “Caro Verbeek: What CanThe Scents of The Past Tell Us About Our History?” (2021), Part 3 of Breathe, here: https://www.npr.org/2021/01/15/956933669/caro-verbeek-what-can-the-scents-of-the-past-tell-us-about-our-history
Or read our olfactory museology paper Verbeek, C., Leemans, I., Fleming, B. (2022), “How can scents enhance the impact of guided museum tours? towards an impact approach for olfactory museology”, Senses & Society, here: https://doi.org/10.1080/17458927.2022.2142012
Olfactory tour for blind and near-sighted people at the Rijksmuseum. Some (including me) are wearing especially designed scent necklaces which are a co-creation and -design by Caro Verbeek, Justus Tomlow and Bernardo Fleming (IFF).
Understanding rituals by the sense of smell – The Adoration of the Magi
We started our multi-sensory tour in the dimly lit vaulted rooms that store medieval and renaissance art works. We halted at the painting ‘Adoration of the Magi’ by Geertgen tot Sint Jans. The artist confronts us with lavishly dressed men holding precious gifts in front of a new-born child sitting on the lap of his mother. After this description the participants recognized the biblical story of the three kings offering frankincense, myrrh and gold to Jesus without even hearing the title of the painting. Not mentioning such details leaves more room for the mind to explore and imagine.
Frankincense and myrrh were meant as burnt offerings to pay honour to kings and gods. In antiquity resins were burnt ‘per fumum’ (through smoke) to make its fragrant emanations reach the nostrils of divine beings. Every contemporary viewer of this painting would have understood that by offering these fragrances these royals symbolically acknowledged the divine and profane superiority of Christ; a meaning that got lost somewhere over the past centuries. And so did the meaning and aromatic quality of one of the scents.
The participants were enabled to actually smell myrrh as part of a story-telling technique. Its aromatic quality (bitter) is connected to its historical meaning: besides being an offering to a god, the bitterness of this resin was considered prophetic and referred to the future suffering of Christ. This means that sensory engagement can actually lead to a better understanding of past rituals. Here’s what participant Emilie De Lanoy Meijer recalled months later:
Geertgen tot Sint Jans, Adoration of the Magi, 1480 – 1485. Two of the gifts offered to Jesus were scents. Myrrh literally translates as bitter and smells accordingly.
“As a fully blind individual I do not feel any connection to paintings, but rather to stories”
We then took a small detour to a so-called ‘pomander’ in the department of the ‘special collections’. Pomanders are metal jewels filled with fragrances, worn by people of high status such as doctors and lawyers. They were hung from a chain or ‘chatelaine’ so the scents could be taken to the nose at will. Fragrances were supposed to help protect people from diseases, which were thought to be caused by bad smells (think of ‘malaria’ which literally means ‘bad air’). Baring in mind the story surrounding the three magi: a pomander could also function as a prayer nut which contents were an offering or wordless prayer in itself.
Poor people had to make do with strong smelling cheaper products such as vinegar and rosemary to stay healthy, strengthening the already existing olfactory dichotomy poor/ foul – rich/ fragrant that still exists today.
The 17th century pomander in question consists of six compartments, not unlike an orange, or a hand with the palm facing up and the fingers brought together at the top. It can be opened by taking down one of the slices and opening its little drawer. I brought a pomander of about the same size from my own collection and made it pass from hand to hand so people could palpate it. The accompanying scent was a reconstructed recipe from a 16th century book of secrets (recipe book) which is also part of the collection of the Rijksmuseum. It contains nutmeg, clove, cinnamon, rose and (artificial) civet. One participant later recalled this part of the tour very vividly. Anita Gonzalez explained why:
Anonymous, compartmentalised pomander, 16th century, 1600 – 1625.
“Art always alludes to its original invisibility, which belongs to the nature of all things, ill-represented by words”
One could argue that museums of visual art are all about objects and their visibilty, but as the quote by Gonzalez illustrates this isn’t the case. Artefacts and paintings refer to and represent concepts, multi-sensory experiences and stories that aren’t just accessible through the eyes, as Bacci and Melcher explain in ‘Art & The Senses (2011):
Participants gently touching elements in the 18th century Beuning Room, ca. 1745.
Amsterdam was a very damp place, due to the many canals and lack of double walls. In order to keep moist levels down and fight the smell of mildew and mold (which in Dutch would be described as ‘muf’) burnt fires and people threw resins and spices in the fireplace, rendering the air sweet and pleasant. The outdoor smells of horses, the canal (which was used as a sewer) and the many lime blossom trees, would still penetrate the interior of the house and mingle with the others.
Smelling, touching, listening and also kinaesthesia (sense of space through movement), can really transform a distant object, into an immersive lived experience.
The emanations of the Battle of Waterloo
We then set off to the department of 19th century art and history (we crossed the entire museum) to find out more about the largest painting in the collection “The Battle of Waterloo” by Jan Willem Pieneman (1824). I first walked the full length of the painting so people could hear its vast size by listening to my footsteps. Only then I tried to explain the depicted situation. Several victorious and heroic men on horses are set against a background of thousands of soldiers depicting different stages of the battle. Wellington with his shiny leather boots takes centre stage. The top half of the painting is filled with dark clouds, giving an indication of the harsh weather conditions on that fateful summer day. In the foreground we see wounded soldiers lying on the floor. A lonely canon ball stuck in a muddy puddle tells the story of Napoleon’s defeat: he had hoped his artillery would have led him to victory. But the mud prevented the cannon balls from reaching their desired destinations.
The scent that was especially composed for this painting – created by senior nose Birgit Sijbrands of IFF – reflected many of the visible elements of the story: the weather, damp earth and grass, gunpowder, leather and horses. Even the smell of anxiety, expressed most lively in the eyes of the horses, made its way into the smell. Since human beings are capable of smelling emotions, the smell yields more discomfort than the painting itself.
In front of the Battle of Waterloo by Pieneman, 1824.
But one element that was present at Waterloo is not accessible through our eyes at all. Everyday, and also the day of his defeat, Napoleon wore his favorite perfume: acqua mirabilis by Farina. He used it to mask the evil smells of battle but also to stay healthy (remember the pomander). This perfume was used in almost every war since by many soldiers and for the same reasons.
Since this scent is now widely known as 4711 Eau de Cologne, many participants relived episodes from their childhood or suddenly remembered their mothers. That means that a smell can make us feel more closely connected to a historical episode while simultaneously addressing individual experiences. This might be why most participants remembered this part of the tour most clearly:
De Lanoy Meijer recalls:
Hannes Wallrafen smelling the Battle of Waterloo composition by Birgit Sijbrands. Picture by Cathelijne Denekamp.
Nostalgia for the nose
We concluded our tour in the ‘attic’ of the museum, touching and smelling the 20th century Bantam airplane. As clinical and pristine as it may look in the museum, it was originally a machine of war that made loud violent noises, that shook heavily, and that spilled motor oil all over the pilot’s face. Since many people still recognize the scent of oil and gasoline, this scent brought up a lot of memories:
De Lanoy Meijer:
Participants touching and smelling the 1918 Bantam Airplane.
The beauty of a scent tour is that its effects last for months (or even years). Half a year after conducting the tour I spoke to participant Joris Rademakers who is low sighted and also slightly anosmic (smell-blind). The strong smell of oil and gasoline evoked in him a great sense of freedom and pleasure, by just imagining it:
Dutch 17th century vanitas.
Depicting the Invisible
A vanitas element that is often overlooked – partially because it is invisible – is smell. Scent, being inherently volatile, disappears. Its very essence is ephemeral and transient, just like time itself. In fact, the flowers in still-lifes should be regarded as multi-sensory carriers of meaning. As their petals and stems wither, so will their aroma, from floral to putrid until the scent completely disappears. Incense burners visibly emitting smoke are a more explicit and very clever way of depicting that very aspect of scent, like in this still life by Edwaert Collier from 1693.
Edwaert Collier, “Vanitas Still Life” with an incense burner at the top right, 1693.
But there are even more apparent examples. This 18th century pomander disguised as a (mock) watch is one of them. A pomander (derived from ‘pomme d’ambre’) was an item (usually made of metal) filled with fragrant substances such as clove, nutmeg, musk and ambergris. Pomanders were used to protect oneself by ‘cleansing the air’, since bad smells (miasmas) were thought to transmit diseases such as the plague (more on miasma-theory 
Pomander-watch. Before 1750. Currently owned by 
Edward Kienholz, inside of “The Beanery”, 1965, collection Stedelijk Museum.
The visitors on the stools and elsewhere in the bar all have clocks for heads, the clock-hands fixated in an eternal smile at 10 to 2. This scene can actually be considered a 3-D vanitas still-life visually frozen in time whereas the sound and the smell are actually time-based performative elements that keep on unwinding.
There is an old newspaper outside the bar that says ‘children are killing children in Vietnam’. The overall message is clear: while the people in the bar are spending their time in vain, innocent children at the other side of the globe are murdered and nothing is done to prevent it.
The Time Capsule Preserving Scent
Although (or rather because) the olfactory dimension of “the Beanery” is time-based it is also limited. It had to be reconstructed several times by the conservators of the Stedelijk Museum.
Exactly half a century after “the Beanery” saw the light artist Esther Brakenhoff (who works at the library of the Stedelijk) was inspired by the analogy between time and smell in Kienholz’s installation. She created a capsule shaped like a classic clock with a reconstruction of the scent inside of it.
Esther Brakenhoff, “Fragrance Capsule, Edward Kienholz – the Beanery”, 2015, private collection artist. Someone had tipped over the sculpture, spilling urine all over the pedestal. Kienholz would probably have loved it.
Smell is connected to time in both a concrete and poetic manner. They are both invisible and immaterial. Both force us to pay attention to the present moment. And they are interwoven phenomena: as time ‘keeps on slipping into the future’ so does scent as time passes by. Dogs are even said to experience time by their sense of smell. They know when their owners are returning from work because their scent trail has diminished to a certain extend.
Ironically some scents fade slower than sounds and images. They can linger for a while as an olfactory echo until these too vanish forever, reminding us of the temporality of life (memento mori!).
Keep on smelling
Watch my Tedx-talk “Inhaling the Past – Smelling the Future” (2016) here: 
How to avoid the plague, 1630
Wallflower and detail of ‘Allegory of Smell’ of the same flower by Guillaume Collaert, 17th century.
Apothecary shop where Theriaca was made and sold. Illustration from Tacuinum sanitatis, 14th century.
Anonymous, engraving after design by
An allegedly original bottle containing the miracle concoction was shown at the 1900 World Fair in Paris, much to the surprise of perfume expert Robert de Montesquiou who wrote in his treaty ‘Pays des Aromats’ (1900) that:
Doctor Schnabel von Rom (plague doctor), engraving, 1656.
Futurist Scents 