Read the following text, which is an article from an online newspaper about an innovative art exhibition in Madrid, Spain. Prado creates palette of odours to make scents of Brueghel painting Madrid gallery's new exhibition will allow visitors to inhale fragrances of 10 items seen in The Sense of Smell The seventeenth-century Italian cardinal Federico Borromeo was so impressed with Jan Brueghel the Elder's work that he once wrote to the artist, declaring he could smell spring itself in the minute petals and leaves that bloomed from the Flemish master's brush. Four hundred years later, those with less olfactory¹ imaginations can head to the Prado in Madrid to fill their nostrils with the scents that suffuse Brueghel's 1617–18 painting The Sense of Smell. For its latest show, the museum has enlisted the services of curators and researchers – and the Puig perfume house – to recreate the fragrances of 10 of the many items that appear in Brueghel's oil on board. The work, part of a set of pieces on the five senses, shows a beautiful garden where plants and flowers abound, peacocks amble and guinea pigs picnic. Brueghel provided the flora and fauna while Peter Paul Rubens contributed the allegorical² figures. Inspired by its heady visuals, Alejandro Vergara, the Prado's head of Flemish painting, had an idea last summer. 'I was thinking out loud for a while and having different conversations with friends and colleagues about a year ago and we came up with the idea of focusing on the sense of smell and having a perfumer³ work on the painting, identify what's in it, and create 10 scents,' said Vergara. Once researchers had identified the 80 different plant and flower species seen in the picture, Gregorio Sola, Puig's senior perfumer, set about creating some of their scents. The fruits of his labour can be sampled from the four diffusers that sit in room 83 of the Prado, delivering their carefully calibrated perfumes at the touch of a screen. As well as jasmine, rose, spikenard, fig tree, orange blossom, daffodil, a bouquet of rose, jasmine and carnation, there is iris – and kid gloves scented with amber. While Sola opted not to conjure up the smell of the guinea pigs, the peacocks or the hound who has muzzled his way into the picture, he did recreate the scent of the civet who lies coiled in its bottom right-hand corner. Puig's diffusers dispense a hot stinky hit of civet, which, thankfully, soon fades out. 'Civet is a pretty harsh, dirty smell, but it's what you find in all the perfume recipes from 1500 and 1600,' said the perfumer. 'That's because it was used as a fixative to make sure the perfume lasted on the skin.' The perfume is synthetic - 'so no animals were hurt' – while all the others are based on highest-quality natural essences, including iris, which is twice as expensive as gold because of the long, slow and complicated extraction process. According to Vergara, the 'strange, innovative exhibition' is intended to introduce visitors to the miniature world of Brueghel and to the scents of past centuries. 'Brueghel is phenomenal, but many people don't focus on him and the reason for that is that he paints very small scale, which makes it very hard when you walk through a museum,' said the curator. 'And the Brueghel name is also a mess, people don't know which Brueghel they're looking at because you have Pieter Bruegel the Elder, his son Jan, and there are a bunch of other Brueghels – and that causes confusion.' But, added Vergara, The Sense of Smell is an incredibly beautiful painting achieved by using single-hair brushes and a magnifying glass. He hopes the unusual mix of sight and smell will pique visitors' interest in the entire five sensory series. 'I think it's a really nice visit to a museum in 45 minutes you look at five beautiful paintings and connect with this idea that you're not expecting: the smell of the past.' Sola hopes his scents will help fix Brueghel's picture in people's minds as keenly as civet musk fixes a fragrance. 'Our olfactory memory is stronger than our visual or auditory memory: the memory of our mother's perfume, of our first car, or of the first day at school with the smell of new pencils and paints,' he said. 'We all have our own olfactory memory and the idea of this exhibition is that Jan Brueghel's painting will leave its own memorable olfactory print on all of us.' ¹olfactory: relating to the sense of smell ²allegorical: symbolic or representative ³perfumer: an expert in creating perfume compositions ⁴civet: small mammal which marks its territory with an unpleasant smell
- (a)You have been asked to write an advertisement which will be published in a brochure publicising the exhibition. Write the text for your advertisement. Use 150–200 words.[10]
- (b)Compare your advertisement with the article, analysing form, structure and language.[15]
Mark scheme
Marking points from the official mark scheme (May/June 2024). The mark or mark type is shown in brackets.
- [0] form, audience, purpose, style, conventions, language and structure will be appropriately adapted to suit the task
- [0] content may include key factual information about the exhibition, as well as other relevant ideas
- [0] tone will be used to have an impact on the reader and to create an effect.
- [0] the typical text conventions used in the original article and the candidate's advertisement
- [0] the ways in which the different purposes affect the content and style of the two texts
- [0] the ways in which the article and the advertisement appeal to the respective intended audiences, e.g. through the tone and register used in each text
- [0] any other relevant aspect of the form of the two texts
- [0] the ways in which headings, sub-headings and short/long paragraphs or sections are used in each text
- [0] the way in which the title is used to highlight what will follow
- [0] beginning with the context – of the artist, the cardinal who praised the painting and the background to the modern exhibition - to set the scene
- [0] how four hundred years of art/history are linked by the exhibition
- [0] ending with a quotation from the senior perfumer of Puig concludes this link between the past and the present
- [0] any other relevant structural features in the text
- [0] the title contains a pun (scents/sense) and a cross-sensory metaphor (palette of odours)
- [0] the use of quotations from the Puig perfumer and the Prado's Head of Flemish Painting to lend credibility and authority to the article
- [0] the visual imagery of the painting as described in the article – beautiful garden, peacocks amble
- [0] olfactory references/lexical field – diffuser, perfumes, scented, hot stinky hit, musk
- [0] alliteration - carefully calibrated
- [0] the list of scents recreated for the exhibition – jasmine, rose, spikenard, fig tree
- [0] facts used in the article – 80 plant and flower species seen in the picture, iris which is twice as expensive as gold, details of the Brueghel dynasty
- [0] the list of olfactory memories common to all humans – the memory of our mother's perfume, of our first car
- [0] any other relevant language features in the text.
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