Perfume in the time of Leonardo da Vinci

(part of the 'Shakespeare's Roses' exhibition at New Place, the University of Warwick in partnership with the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and Floris London, Perfumers)

Leonardo’s mother was abducted in her youth on the banks of the Black Sea and sold into slavery. Slaves and perfumes followed the same itineraries and were bought in the same cities. Leonardo da Vinci was interested in fragrances and perfumes in various formats, like the Cyprus birdies/oiselets and pomanders, and wrote about them. He developed anatomically informed theories of sensations and also created complex 'alembics' (stills). His famous portrait 'the Lady with an Ermine' depicts a necklace made of bits of black amber. Similarly, Renaissance costumes and accessories conveyed beautiful odours. The luxury world of Renaissance Courts was full of elaborate smells and Leonardo’s life lead him to encounter many perfume traditions from various places, including Florence, Milan, Venice and France. The prospect of this talk is to offer a trip in this world of wonders.

Pascal Brioist is Professor at the University of Tours, France, and at the Centre d’études Supérieures de la Renaissance. He has produced a series of textbooks on a wide range of topics in the Renaissance and the 17th and 18th centuries, including Europeans and the sea, science and technology and rural history and society in France. He has written biographies of both Leonardo da Vinci and François 1er for the Presses Universitaires de France. Over the past twenty years he has become a specialist on Leonardo da Vinci, on whom he has written a number of books and articles, including Léonard de Vinci, Homme de Guerre (Alma, 2013) and Les Audaces de Leonard de Vinci (Stock, 2019). Involved in public history, he has been the curator of several exhibitions on Leonardo, especially one on Leonardo’s anatomy (2023), another one on Leonardo and perfumes (2024) and he is currently organizing a new one for 2025 on Leonardo and biomimicry. All those exhibitions are held at the Clos Lucé in Amboise, France, where Leonardo lived his last years.