The Five Senses, Smell

The series of paintings illustrating the Five Senses reveals a clearly Baroque sensibility, evident in the artist’s capacity to capture the psychology of his sitters, the portrait’s realism resulting from the artist’s skill in capturing the spontaneity of a fleeting moment. Gonzales Coques painted two other series of paintings devoted to the five senses, of which one is currently in the National Gallery, London. In the series in the Brukenthal Art Gallery, the painter emphasizes the psychological states of his sitters, apparently common people, from the lower middle class. In this series, the attributes of the senses only serve as pretexts, to include in the composition a number of static elements (tables laden with food, musical notes, smoking paraphernalia, medical instruments, and an easel). Smell captivates us by the highly focused concentration of the character. The attribute of the olfactory sense is the perfume vial, and the attitude of the man reveals the connoisseur, in the tense moment preceding his decision concerning the quality of the product he is inspecting. The viewer is invited to form his own opinion concerning the outcome of this scene. ©Dana Roxana Hrib, European Art Gallery Guidebook, Second edition, Sibiu 2011.