Ever considering that the days of the ancient Greek thinker Aristotle, it has been supposed that there is a hierarchy of the human senses. Sight comes out as the most important, then hearing, with touch, odor and taste lower down.
Credit: Public Domain.
If senses like odor get less attention in the here and the now, they get almost none when it comes to the past. Perhaps it is appropriate that researchers are paying much greater attention to the smells of the past.
Old smells
How about this question, for instance: what did daily life smell like 200 years earlier?
At the time, Wicky was based at the Rhône-Alpes Historical Research Laboratory in Lyon, France. One day, she became aware of a colour-mixing cabinet that belonged to the French painter Fleury Richard, who worked from around the turn of the 19th century.
This is the extremely first European research project to develop state of the art computer technology approaches to document the role and capture smell has actually played — and still plays — in our culture, states Prof Inger Leemans at the Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) in the Netherlands.
To begin with, the team looked at a great deal of digital records– images, paintings texts from the 17th to the early 20th centuries and identified these to highlight recommendations to smell. They then trained a machine-learning algorithm to acknowledge these referrals to smells, and after that set the algorithm to deal with caches of art work and historic sources in academic databases. This has enabled the group to produce a semantic web of smells (called the European Olfactory Knowledge Graph), which can help researchers understand how and where smells were created, experienced and comprehended.
Another huge part of the project involves providing cultural organizations a higher ability to interact the significance of fragrances to the public. In November 2021, the group performed a test tour at the Museum of Ulm in Germany where visitors could see the art and odor relevant smells from the past as they went along.
The group have actually published numerous papers detailing their methodology. The hope is that this web of understanding will make it possible for scientists to check out how smells have evolved with time.
A 2nd piece of research study could broaden the scope of our knowledge of historical smells much further. Worth EUR2.8 million, ODEUROPA is an EU-funded job aiming to establish methods of recording Europes historical olfactory culture and check out how institutions such as museums can use odor to increase the impact of their collections.
These are linseed oil and turpentine, which were used for mixing oil paints; a glue from rabbit skin, which was utilized painted on canvases to make them more stiff; and varnish, which was used to the completed painting to protect it.
We are currently developing a search engine that can assist users discover associated smells, in a comparable manner to how internet search engines work, says team member Dr Marieke van Erp. Not yet publicly readily available, the plan is that a variation will be on the web in the near future.
Dr Wicky is now finishing off a book about her project. And she is wanting to continue studying the function of odor in classical painting. She mentions that smell was also a way for painters to get understanding. They would typically inspect the composition of pigments, which were really pricey, by burning small amounts of them and sniffing them– to examine the merchants were not trying to cheat them.
And so she began a task called PaintOdor, intending to exercise what the dominant smells in a painters studio would have been. Utilizing the proof of the cabinet and composed materials from the time, and the understanding of other specialists, Dr Wicky has actually shown that there are four key smells that would have hung in the air of a painters studio at the time.
For example, visitors viewed a 1628 painting of a wealthy lady holding a set of scented leather gloves. Such gloves were a popular present and device at the time. And the team worked with parfumiers from the company International Flavours and Fragrances to recreate the aroma so that visitors could sniff it as they viewed the painting.
Odor search
It is a lovely object, however a hazardous one, said Dr Wicky. Some of the pigments include 60% arsenic. She understood this cabinet would be a great source to check out how a painters studio would have smelled.
The cabinet had been preserved in great condition in the bowels of Lyons Museum of Fine Art. It was stocked with more than 100 pigments and other artists products, each wrapped in paper, with notes affixed in the painters own hand saying what every one was.
Dr Wicky has actually been working together with parfumiers at the Swiss flavour and scent company Givaudan to recreate the gives off these products (a few of the genuine chemicals, such as turpentine, are too poisonous to utilize). The strategy is to utilize these at an exhibit of Richards paintings at the Lyon museum next year. The plan is to offer visitors a leaflet to guide them through an exhibit from which they will be able to peel sticker labels to sniff the smells of the artists materials.
Art historian Dr Érika Wicky had never questioned this assumption up until she was looking through newspapers from the time and began discovering adverts for odour-free varnishes. It got her wondering what the smells of an artists studio would have been like.
Parfumiers
In general, visitors have actually taken pleasure in the experience, states George Alexopoulos, another employee. For numerous, utilizing the sense of smell in order to think of stories, items and locations seems to be intriguing and it is something brand-new and different.
Paint cabinet
Scent of hell
This article initially appeared in Horizon Magazine.
The group is hoping that, in future, other jobs will have the ability to draw on its techniques and tools to further incorporate scent into cultural organizations. And for the moment, it is continuing to establish similar foul-smelling trips. The most current, called City Sniffers, is a strolling trip of Amsterdam where people can carry along a scratch-and-sniff card so they can experience appropriate smells along the route.
And she is hoping to continue studying the role of smell in classical painting. She points out that smell was likewise a way for painters to obtain knowledge. They then trained a machine-learning algorithm to recognise these referrals to smells, and then set the algorithm to work on caches of artworks and historic sources in academic databases. This has made it possible for the team to produce a semantic web of smells (called the European Olfactory Knowledge Graph), which can assist scientists comprehend how and where smells were created, experienced and comprehended.
She realised this cabinet would be an excellent source to check out how a painters studio would have smelled.
One intriguing part of the research study is that people respond to smells in a different way. There are particular smells that particular individuals cant find.
