Springtime Incense: Santa Maria Novella Incenso (short fragrance review)

photo borrowed via pinterest

Incense scents are a beloved genre that reads well in springtime for me. Santa Maria Novella's Incenso is one such. In Incenso, we have a great fusion of personal introspection and pleasurable outward accountability; the composition reads as both zen for a spiritual mood, but not too ecclesiastical or sombre. Beginning with a dense myrrh and rosy-spice mélange that is not very distant from the chord in Messe de Minuit, it is already ripe and airy, with juniper and patchouli, as well as woody, serene, and earthy, evoking soil and plants growing in a cloistered monastery. It feels buoyant and airy, like a pigeon's feather traveling on the wind, blowing in some secret garden, hiding beneath the walls of the Florentine city.

The scent in Santa Maria Novella's Incenso begins with a dense myrrh and rosy-spice mélange which is not very distant from the chord in Messe de Minuit. It is already ripe and airy with juniper and patchouli as well as woody, serene and earthy, evoking soil and plants growing in a cloistered monastery. Both facets are evocative of the traditional uses of incense and protective amulets for the body, the way that perfume worked as a prophylactic tool before the sanitation of Western cities. It then dries down to pure frankincense, yet still spicy, with a hint of cloves and cinnamon alongside the officially noted nagarmotha (cyperus) and cool, earthy vetiver. This furthers the attractive, deep quality of the blend, instead of the chillingly cold facet, reminiscent of the crypt, as presented in the astounding La Liturgie des Heures.

To me it seems that the fragrance has not benefited from much positivity in the perfume sphere because it is a strange, unusual beast; a pleasant incense which is not indicative of haute tastes. But there is no reason to snub one's nose on something that marries centuries-old traditions with contemporaneity. One can enjoy things our milieu enjoys as well. I will take my book and gallivant the caliginous gardens of the Medicis next time I travel, wearing Santa Maria Novella's Incenso. Sounds like a plan.

Incenso by Italian niche brand Santa Maria Novella from Florence was launched in 2024. Top notes are Cardamom and Pink Pepper; middle notes are Frankincense and Cypriol; base note is Vetiver.

Santa Maria Novella Gardenia: fragrance review

“The house smelled musty and damp, and a little sweet, as if it were haunted by the ghosts of long-dead cookies.”
~Neil Gaiman, American Gods

Smelling the little known Gardenia by the Florentine pharmacy brand of Santa Maria Novella, thanks to the inquisitive generosity of a special reader, I am reminded not of cookies exactly, but of cachous, the French candies that are composed of minty, bitter elements (minus their licorice), and of another candy conflated, popular with elder ladies, those chalky rounds flavored with violet and aniseed but seemingly without much sugar. Gardenia, you see, has the rare ability to go for the effect of not one, but two candies at the same time, eschewing allusions to syrupy delights, as it goes about its business; more the ghost of candies past than real ones.

Domenico Ghirlandaio, detail from Visitation, at Capella Tornabuoni at Santa Maria Novella, Florence

But that's half the story. In Gardenia there's detectable camphor on top, a hint of mothballs, surely lent by either a small tuberose facet (close kin to natural gardenia, but its advantage is that contrary to gardenia it can be sufficiently extracted), or via organic chemistry.
The mushroom dampness that evolves in a potted gardenia plant surfaces too in the Santa Maria Novella perfume (much like it did in the since discontinued Velvet Gardenia in Tom Ford's Private Line of fragrances), the earthiness of the soil in which the stems grow, the greenery, the humid air of the tropics that is its natural habitat. The end result smells little of the total that makes a lifelike gardenia perfume (all the more so a soliflore, a fragrance imitating the scent of a single flower), highlighting in odd focus elements of the live gardenia, like a super-sized vision through a microscope, germs appearing like monsters of the abyss or engulfing other micro-organisms via tentacle-like arms and legs: the green, the undergrowth, the musty note, the camphor….they're there in giga size. It also adds elements that are unfamiliar to our perception of the gardenia plant, copious ionones, smelling like violets & wood, and anethole (the molecule recognizable in anise).

It feels green & mauve, not white. It's demure long dresses in dove grey rather than a silky top over a hugging the curves pencil skirt. It's unkempt chestnut hair in matted tresses rather than glossy waves licking bronzed shoulders. It's John Dowland's I saw my lady weep, not Manuel de Falla. It's melancholy with a dash of neglect and abandonment, rather than boiling passions. To me at least.

For a photo-realistic gardenia fragrance you need to access either the discontinued Yves Rocher Pur Desir de Gardenia (in which the effect is rendered via jasmolactones) or Estee Lauder's Private Collection Tuberose Gardenia (in which the latter floral effectively upstages the usually diva- esque former one). Santa Maria Novella's Gardenia is an atypical one, a "difficult" to get scent but quite interesting all the same, and probably better appreciated as an earthy, non sweet violet scent trampled in undergrowth than the waxy petaled white flower of the tropics that induces ultra-romantic reverie.
(For one such, read a different take by Jane Daly)