Smell

Smell, from Gonzales Coques's Five Senses series in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp, was traditionally represented through flowers, perfume, or figures engaging with aromatic substances — roses, herbs, smelling salts, or the more ambiguous pleasures of kitchen or garden. In the moral framework inherited from classical and medieval thought, Smell occupied a middle position among the senses: less elevated than Sight and Hearing, which were associated with intellect and art, but less base than Touch and Taste, which were linked most directly to bodily appetite. Coques's rendering would have given this hierarchy visual form through the quality of the figure's engagement with the aromatic subject — contemplative and appreciative, or indulgent and absorbed. The 1650 dating places this among the most consistent period of Coques's production. The Royal Museum in Antwerp holds the core of the Five Senses series, allowing the works to be read as the group they were intended to form.

Canvas with the warm interior palette typical of Coques's series panels. Flowers or aromatic objects are treated as still-life passages of high technical quality alongside the figure study. The figure's posture — inclined toward the scented object, nostrils implicitly active — must be painted in a way that communicates sensation through purely visual means. Coques's restrained brushwork maintains decorum even in a subject that invited sensory indulgence.