What always amazes me when I look at a small antique object, such as scent bottle, is noticing the extreme care with which they are made and the search for beauty even in the parts that remain hidden.
This is the case of this silver mandolin-shaped perfume box, externally decorated in guilloche enamel with scenes of outdoor musical entertainment. The richness of the colors and details of the faces and clothes, as well as of the landscape is taken care of down to the smallest detail and already defines it as an object of great artistic quality.
The interior, however, reserves further discoveries: the background, of an intense blue, is decorated in gold, as are the closing band and a surprising medal, worked in embossment, in which a Saint George on horseback pierces a dragon with a spear, according to the classical iconography, due to the Golden Legend. This holy protector of knights was also invoked against plague and leprosy. We are therefore still in a time in which perfume is still seen as a balsamic protection against diseases.
In the province of Ferrara (I) the cult is particularly widespread because often, in the popular belief of the Early Middle Ages, the Po and other smaller courses were considered the lair of a dragon, which Saint George would have killed while saving the inhabitants. This is why in the exhibition dedicated to perfume holders, held at the Museo del Delta Antico, it symbolized the commitment of the dukes Borso and Ercole d’Este in the reclamation of the marshy and unhealthy territories of the Polesine.
