Casanova by Histoires de Parfums

Back in December I went to an excellent exhibit at the local Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth entitled Casanova: The Seduction of Europe. It was a fascinating look at 18th century Europe through the life and travels of Giacomo Casanova (1725-1798). Casanova is immortalized as one of the world's great lovers, but he was so much more than that. He was an adventurer, traveler, and memoirist who left us with a brilliant picture of life in Europe in the 18th century. His circle of influence included many famous people of the era including Rousseau and Voltaire, Benjamin Franklin, King George III, King Louis XV, and Catherine the Great. The exhibit used paintings as well as furniture and costume displays to give visitors some idea of this glittering world.

Canaletto's The Grand Canal Near the Rialto Bridge, Venice

The exhibit starts in Venice, Casanova's birth place, and I don't think I've ever seen so many Canaletto paintings in one place. A chance encounter with a Venitian nobleman changed the course of Casanova's life and drags him out of poverty. 

Jean Honore Fragonard's The See-Saw

Another gallery is dedicated to Casanova the seducer and several of Fragonard's exuberant Rococo style paintings are used to illustrate this portion of his life. And yes, this Fragonard's father was a master perfumer and glovemaker, the name still used by the well-known perfume company in Grasse, where Jean Honore Frgonard was born. 

Tiepolo's The Charlaton

At the Kimbell's exhibit there was an area titled The Theater of Identity. Venice was a city of masks. Casanova at various times was a musician, an actor, and sometimes found it useful to travel under assumed names. Paintings and displays of clothing of the era illustrate the world Casanova inhabited and some of the famous people he met in his travels. Casanova was able to straddle the very proper constraints of the society of his day; going from the extremes of being imprisoned (and later escaping) to consorting with the monarchs of France, England, and Russia.

There were displays of luxurious artifacts of the era and paintings of the cities to which he traveled. For me the exhibit illustrated some of the more glamorous aspects of European life in the mid-1700s. It also expanded on the accepted one-dimensional persona we identify as Casanova and showed him to be a historic figure of influence and multi-talents.

This exhibit just finished in San Francisco and will arrive at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston on July 8th. If you have any interest in this era or in Casanova as a historical figure the exhibit is well worth your time. If you are nowhere near Boston but still have an interest, have a look at this wonderful synopsis of the Casanova exhibit put on by the Legion of Honor Museum, San Francisco, linked here. It includes some of the art works as well as informative talks by the museum's curators.

After the exhibit I remembered that I had a decant of the perfume Casanova by Histoires de Parfums.  The brand was created by Gerald Ghislain and is described as an olfactive library of perfumes inspired by historical figures. Sometimes the perfumes are identified by the numbers only, in this case 1725 is the year of Casanova's birth. 

1725 Casanova is classified as an aromatic fougere. The three basic building blocks of a fougere fragrance, which translates to fern-like, are lavender, oakmoss, and coumarin. From these three a fragrance can go in various directions, emphasizing the sweetness of the lavender, playing on the darkness of the oakmoss, or emphasizing various aspects of the coumarin, which has the notes of hay, vanilla, and almond. 

1725 Casanova starts with a light and sparkling almost minty lavender. Citrus sunny notes shimmer and have equal footing with the lavender note.  Rather quickly I start to smell the spicy notes of star anise and licorice, although I wouldn't have been able to identify them as such without looking at the list of notes. As these notes come in the lavender fades and the scent becomes bone dry, almost dusty and a trifle smoky, not the smoke of incense but of dust. I am already smelling the cedar. At this point the lavender is very much in the background and hard to pick out. This dryness continues on my skin with a hay note, which strangely enough I think comes from the almond and vanilla. On my skin some of the notes are not what you might expect. Yes, there is lavender but after a moment in the spotlight it goes behind the curtain, whispering lines to the chorus on stage, there but not there. Vanilla is a note that can become overwhelmingly sweet to me, but here it is dry and powdered. I smell vanilla but it is more like sniffing the extract, not the cookies baking in the oven.

Licorice is not a taste I seek out; perhaps because of bad memories of a certain Jagermeister-shot fueled college party which left me with an aversion to the licorice tasting liqueur. Although it is listed on the Histoires de Parfum website as one of the three key ingredients in 1725 Casanova, along with lavender and amber, the licorice note doesn't stand out to me.

Some reviewers spoke of getting a lightly gourmand lavender and vanilla in 1725 Casanova's maturing stages and I was kind of hoping that would be my experience as it's a combination I love. On my skin however the dry cedar was even more dominant than the note of amber and the perfume wasn't even slightly gourmand to me. This fragrance is a bit of a dandy, but in a very elegant way. There are no loud strident notes to offend anyone here, even haters of the scent of lavender. This is unisex but I think I would prefer this on my husband. I like my lavender scents to be a bit more prominent with the herbal notes and the astringency of the lavender, as it's not a note I run away from. I picture this fragrance on a man wearing a well fitting suit, polished shoes, not a hair out of place.

Before I viewed this exhibit and gained a more well-rounded perspective about Casanova's life I might have expected an opulent and more seductive perfume, heavy and lush. This is the opposite; gentrified, polished, and even a little austere. But now understanding the world Casanova moved in and how he was able to rise from the humblest of beginnings in a very class-conscious society to mix seamlessly with the upper echelon, it makes more sense that he was a chameleon, able to mix and fit in the world to which he aspired. Yes, he was a master of the liaison amoureuse, so much so that the name Casanova is described in the Merriam-Webster dictionary as lover. But his interests and influences extended far beyond the walls of the boudoir and he is revealed as one of the more interesting characters of 18th century Europe. 

Photos from www.kimbellart.org. Perfume my own.