Tobacco (Smell?)

Tobacco (Smell?) is another panel from Wautier's five senses series, here depicting the sense of smell through the fashionable new practice of tobacco smoking. The association of tobacco with smell reflects seventeenth-century attitudes toward this newly imported commodity. Wautier's five senses series is among the most ambitious programmatic undertakings by any woman artist of the seventeenth century. Working in Brussels, she produced large-scale allegorical paintings that rival her male con...

The figure handling tobacco is rendered with naturalistic detail, the smoke and associated objects painted with careful attention to their sensory qualities.