Anxiety sweat. Horsehair. Wet grass and soil after a rain. Gunpowder. Perfume (香水) containing rosemary and bitter orange. A touch of leather.
This might have been what Napoleon's withdrawal from the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 smelled like. At least, these are some of the elements that Caro Verbeek, an art historian and olfactory (嗅觉的) researcher, tried to combine when she was reconstructing the smell. "Wars are extremely smelly," Dr. Verbeek said. "Soldiers don't write about their injuries as much as they write about the terrible sounds and smells. So we know more about them. We also know that it had rained the night before the battle, that anxiety sweat smells different from normal sweat, and that there were thousands of horses on the field." These were some details Dr. Verbeek relied on during the reconstruction, which is part of a project called "In Search of Lost Scents (气味)."The scent is offered in the Rijks museum as part of tours—on pieces of paper or in a necklace with tiny pumps—alongside Jan Willem Pieneman's 1824 painting of the scene.
Dr. Verbeek approaches past smells by attempting to recreate versions of them, as she did with the Battle of Waterloo, making a perfume of sorts that might be associated with historical events, people and works of art. Bringing smell into a museum context can be one way to make art more accessible. Marie Clapot, associate museum educator, has worked over the last few years to bring smell into the museum. "It's not just about, Oh, it's nice to smell something.' It's one way you can make an art object accessible. It is also a way, she said, to bring a number of people into the conversation about art who might not be moved by traditional art history.
