Smell (Portrait of Lucas Fayd'herbe)

This is one of five paintings intended to hang together, each of which denotes one of the five senses – a common theme for painting in the Low Countries in the seventeenth century. In each of these paintings Gonzales Coques has used a traditional activity to represent the relevant sense.Here, pipe smoking could indicate either Taste (as it does in another series by Coques, now in the Brukenthal National Museum, Sibiu) or Smell. This figure is widely assumed to represent Smell, because another painting in the series, which shows a man with a wine glass and oysters, is almost certainly intended as Taste.It is also believed to be a portrait of the sculptor Lucas Fayd'herbe (1617–1697), as it resembles another portrait of him by Coques that was published as an engraving in 1661. Two of the other four paintings have been identified as painters, so it’s possible that all the sitters in the series were artists.