The painstaking beauty produced by Pre-Raphaelite and Aesthetic Movement artists is almost supernatural in form, depth, colors, and subjects, and so expressive that fragrance, a sense impossible to translate into imagery, is a hallmark feature. Through depictions of fairylike young women sniffing the fields of flowers they so delicately inhabit, and the hyper-romanticization of blossoms and incense, scent and smell served as metaphors in 19th-century discourses on women’s rights, faith, and morality. Birmingham’s Barber Institute of Fine Arts presents an exhibition exploring this unique form of synaesthesia—and accompanies it with an optional scent experience. —Lucy Horowitz