They say that when Pablo Picasso visited the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan and saw Francesco Hayez's "The Kiss" (1859), he reached out and tried to touch the pale blue dress of the woman in the painting. He wanted indeed to check if the fabric was really painted or if it was real.
Inspired by this story the curators at Brera started thinking about how to create connections between paintings and the power of our senses and, when they came to touch, they decided to opt for textile captions.
Selected paintings in the gallery are accompanied by a display with samples of fabrics replicating the textiles in the paintings. The process has been a bit slow as the paintings are matched with luxurious textiles produced by the best companies around, but it is definitely effective.
The latest addition to the collection is a pale blue Satin Duchesse (Article 1324) fabric by Como-based Taroni that accompanies Hayez's famous painting representing a couple embracing and kissing each other, considered as a representation of the spirit of the Risorgimento.
Francesco Hayez chose for the dress a splendid fine silk satin probably imported from China and popular with the upper classes and Taroni's sample creates a perfect connection with the painting.
This is the fifth textile caption at the Pinacoteca, but visitors can discover more, including a damasked textiles by Rubelli accompanying Crivelli's Camerino Triptych (Triptych of Saint Domenico) and his Madonna and Child with St. Peter and St. Paul, St. Ansovinus and St. Jerome / Madonna of the Candle (1488-1490).
Rubelli boasts a rich collection of textile documents dated between the 15th and 20th century and recreated the textiles exhibited at Brera with four manual looms from the 1700s.
Brera also invites visitors to experience paintings via their café menu to stimulate taste and music events to sharpen the visitors' hearing. For what regards smell, some paintings were recently matched with special fragrances curated by perfumier Lorenzo Villoresi, founder of the first museum of perfume in Italy.
For example a diffuser placed next to the Adoration of the Magi by Gaudenzio Ferrari allows to smell myrrh, while Crivelli's Madonna of the Candle is accompanied by a sweet fragrance of Lilium candidum (also known as Madonna lily).
The museum hopes that these multi-sense activities and synesthetic associations will help visitors of all ages contemplating beauty and discovering more details about particular paintings. Hopefully, the textile captions will also prove inspiring for fashion design students and designers interested in establishing further connections with art in their creations.
