This week’s work of art is not strictly beer-oriented, except that we use our fives senses, and in particular smell and taste, to create and enjoy the flavor of beer. It’s by the Austrian painter Hans Makart and it’s title is Die Fünf Sinne, or “The Five Senses.” The oil painting consists of five panels completed in 1879, though other sources claim he worked on it off and on from 1840 until 1884.

Here’s a description of the painting from the Columbian World Exposition of 1893.

The five-paneled oil painting which is portrayed above was, on account of the notoriety of its author, one of the chief attractions of the Austrian galleries in the Art Palace. It was a study in the nude, showing five different views of an ideal female human form. The senses of Smelling, Seeing, Hearing, Feeling and Tasting are represented as in action, and in Tasting, Eve plucks the fruit from that forbidden tree “whose mortal taste brought death into the world, and all our woe with loss of Eden.” The sense of Feeling, on the other hand, flatters woman with a recognition of her principal attraction, the love of the young and the joy that comes with its touch. Hans Makart, the sensational Austrian painter, was born in 1840 and died in Venice in 1884.

Below are “Smell” and “Taste” shown a little bigger, since those are the two most important for tasting beer.

You can see more of Makart’s paintings at the Art Renewal Center and also the Museum Syndicate.