Thursday scent of the day 5/14 :: Now Smell This

Happy Almost-Friday! Birthdays: Thomas Gainsborough, Sidney Bechet, George Lucas. What fragrance are you wearing?

I’m stealing SheriG’s fragrance from yesterday, Parfum d’Empire Azemour Les Orangers. Note that some experts think the oranges in the painting are included to advertise the couple’s great wealth, but others emphasize the biblical connections to innocence, sin and temptation (and note that in Van Eyck’s Ghent Altarpiece, Eve is holding a citrus fruit).**

Reminder: on 5/15 we’re doing the Picture challenge, edition 11. The subject is the Arnolfini Portrait by Jan van Eyck.* As usual, you are free to be as farfetched as you like in your fragrance choice…or go literal: her dress is green, they are both wearing animal fur, there are oranges on the chest and windowsill, and cherries on the tree outside the window, etc etc. Thank you to Calypso for the suggestion! (In the fall, we’ll do a more modern piece by Sonia Delaunay, suggested by Kanuka.)

And for those of you who like to plan ahead, see Scent of the day ~ Friday community projects 2026, where I’ll try (but usually fail) to have the next five or six weeks mapped out in advance.

Note: top  and bottom images are detail from the Arnolfini Portrait, good image of full painting here.

*Extra reading: The many questions surrounding Jan Van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait at JSTOR (this article has many useful close ups of the painting); The Arnolfini Portrait: Theories, Interpretations, and Analysis at The Collector; Hannah Gadsby: why I love the Arnolfini Portrait, one of art history’s greatest riddles at The Guardian.

**See also: How the Forbidden Fruit Became an Apple at Rutgers, which notes that there are several candidates for the forbidden fruit, including the citron or etrog. Cherries, meanwhile, in paintings of the time are often associated with biblical references to the blood of Christ, virtue, redemption, and paradise.