THE MERCHANT OF VENICE: Venetian Fragrances Born from a Perfume Museum

“My heartfelt love of Venice and the wonderful history of Venetian perfumery inspired me to create this brand.”

— Marco Vidal

Blue-and-gold arabesques, vividly colored glass, and a compass-like wind rose. The bottles of THE MERCHANT OF VENICE carry memories of the waterborne city’s connections across the sea. The fragrances’ subjects extend from the aromatic materials carried by trading ships to roses surviving in the region, an opera singer, and Asian tea.

The brand was created by Marco Vidal of the Vidal family, which has long operated a perfume business in Venice. Its starting point lay in the work of creating the perfume museum at Palazzo Mocenigo. Researching history, smelling aromatic materials, and encountering glass and documents: the brand connects that experience with perfumes to be worn today.

Essential Information
The Founder and the Brand’s Beginnings
An Approach to Craftsmanship
Representative Perfumes and How to Choose
Incidentally, the Founder Likes “the Smell of Horses”
References

Essential Information

The brand’s beginnings: The cultural project began in 2013. The first perfume collection launched in October 2014
Founder: Marco Vidal, the fourth generation of the Vidal family’s perfume business
Parent company: Mavive, owned by the Vidal family
Base: Venice, Italy
Main ranges: Murano Collection, Murano Exclusive, Nobil Homo, Venezia & Oriente, Accordi di Profumo, and others
Availability in Japan: Stocked by the official Japanese online store, ISETAN BEAUTY online, Profumeria in Minami-Aoyama, FRA-GRA-NZA at Azabudai Hills, and other retailers

The Founder and the Brand’s Beginnings

The Vidal Family’s Perfume Business, Dating to 1900

The Vidal family’s perfume business began in 1900, when Angelo Vidal established a company dealing in soaps, spices, and goods imported from Asia. Its first perfume workshop was housed in Palazzo Mocenigo in the San Stae district. The museum that would later become the brand’s starting point and the site of the family’s trade occupy the same place.

The business expanded onto the mainland, and perfumes such as Pino Silvestre emerged. The original Vidal company passed to Henkel in 1980, and in 1986 Angelo’s grandson Massimo founded Mavive. The company name was taken from Massimo Vidal Venezia. What Marco inherited was experience in perfumery, manufacturing, and distribution, together with a deep interest in his own city.

An Idea Born from Creating a Perfume Museum

The Vidal family conceived a project connecting its own experience with Venice’s perfume culture. Through a collaboration between the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia and Mavive, new perfume displays were added to Palazzo Mocenigo in 2013. A palace that had told the history of clothing now offered a route into the history of scent.

The displays include a perfumer’s workshop, stills, old aromatic materials and containers, and maps showing trade routes. There are also places where visitors can actually smell the raw materials. As Marco worked on this project, he developed the idea of sharing the culture encountered in the museum through perfumes people could wear.

“Culture gives a business credibility and depth.”

— Marco Vidal

Here lies a reason to get to know this brand. Rather than merely attaching history to product names, it supports the very place where that history is researched and begins creating from there. Choosing a perfume can also become a point of entry into the techniques and culture of its place of origin.

The 2014 Launch and the Name “The Merchant of Venice”

The first Murano Collection launched in October 2014, and a flagship store opened in Campo San Fantin. Nobil Homo, Murano Exclusive, and Murano Art Collection followed in 2015, expanding the forms of expression in both fragrance and containers.

The name THE MERCHANT OF VENICE came to Marco one night as he was thinking of a name for the project. It could express the merchant traveling in search of fine raw materials from around the world and the cultural exchanges brought about by those journeys. The phrase was also widely known through Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, fitting the idea of sharing Venice with the world.

In 2022, the brand introduced Accordi di Profumo, a way to learn about the scents of materials, and added a place for olfactory learning and creation to the historic bookshop Libreria Studium. The founding idea continues in this gradual process of connecting the museum, stores, perfumes, and places to learn.

An Approach to Craftsmanship

Connecting Trade Routes and Old Recipes with Contemporary Perfumery

The trading convoys of the Republic of Venice, known as a “muda” in the singular and “mude” in the plural, linked Mediterranean ports with Asia and Africa beyond them. Routes traveled to obtain spices, woods, resins, and essential oils inspire the brand as a whole and form the background to the Murano Collection in particular.

What matters to Marco is treating history and the present together.

“First of all, both the designs and the fragrances are contemporary.”

— Marco Vidal

Old recipes are records of what people of the time scented and which materials they combined. The Vidal family was also involved in reprinting Giovanventura Rosetti’s perfume book, published in Venice in 1555. Studying historical formulas is also a way to build the knowledge needed to rework them into contemporary perfumes.

In the current fragrance-creation process, the olfactory development team led by Nicola Pozzani prepares a detailed creative brief and communicates it to partner fragrance houses and perfumers. The team evaluates several proposals and works through successive revisions. Marco defines the cultural subjects and shapes the brand’s fragrances together with perfumery specialists and the development team.

Bottle Designs Reflecting Glass, Architecture, and Textiles

Comparing the bottles reveals different choices about which Venice to express. Murano Collection uses glass dressed in colors and patterns; Murano Exclusive centers its decoration on blue and gold; Nobil Homo uses rectangular containers incorporating the colors and patterns of traditional textiles. Each range layers the region’s crafts and aesthetic sensibility over its fragrances.

The Arabesque bottle, for example, has a blue-and-gold arabesque pattern inspired by Venice’s Ca’ d’Oro palace, with a wind rose on its golden cap. The trade that provides the fragrance’s subject and its visible decoration come together in a single container.

Murano Art combines black bottles with patterned glass decoration known as murrine. Even among the ranges bearing the name “Murano”, glassmaking is presented in different ways: from decoration reflecting architectural designs to patterned glass itself. Comparing what is reflected in each bottle adds to the pleasure of choosing.

Accordi di Profumo: The Scents of Materials and Their Origins

Accordi di Profumo is a range combining the names of materials and places. Names such as Bergamotto Italia, Patchouli Indonesia, and Vanilla Madagascar reveal what each fragrance centers on and which place it connects to. These are finished eaux de parfum built around a single scent theme, not concentrates for formulating perfumes.

The brand links the range to Givaudan’s Sourcing4Good and the work of the Givaudan Foundation, emphasizing responsible sourcing and support for communities in the regions of production. The range can be read as connecting the history of what merchants once carried, and from where, to the question of how today’s raw materials reach us.

Each fragrance can be worn alone and is also intended for layering. First explore the character of one material, then layer another fragrance over it and compare the change. This offers an entry into the materials themselves, different from approaching the brand through its decorative bottles.

Representative Perfumes and How to Choose

Rosa Moceniga: Placing a Rose That Survives Locally at the Heart of a Fragrance

Rosa Moceniga is an eau de parfum inspired by the Mocenigo rose that survives at an estate in Alvisopoli. In the flower’s history as told by the brand, a rose that traveled from China to France was brought to Venice by Lucia Mocenigo, a friend of Joséphine Bonaparte. Even a single flower has a background of people and places connected by travel.

The official composition layers rose, blackcurrant leaves, and Sicilian lemon with magnolia and lotus, supported by musk, white cedar, vanilla, and amber. Rather than looking for a rose dramatically transformed by spices or heavy woods, this is a fragrance in which to explore how fruit, flowers, and a soft base bring the rose forward. It is an initial candidate for anyone wishing to discover the brand through a plant that survives in the region.

Andalusian Soul: A Route Connecting North Africa and Spain

Andalusian Soul is an eau de parfum inspired by the Muda di Barbaria. Its background lies in the route from Venice through North African ports to Málaga, and in the herbs, labdanum, and drinking culture carried along it.

Its composition combines acacia, rum, and amber with cistus, labdanum, and smoky accords, leading into vanilla and sage. The specificity of its subject lies in layering resinous, herbal, and liquor-like elements rather than making sweet vanilla the sole protagonist. If you enjoy sweetness with resins, checking whether the rum expression and sage’s herbal character strike a balance you like can make choosing easier.

Arabesque: Tobacco and Spices Paired with Blue-and-Gold Decoration

Arabesque is an eau de parfum concentrée in the Murano Exclusive range. It moves from tobacco leaves, plum, and ginger into cinnamon, tonka, and cedar, on a base of benzoin, vetiver, and musk.

Placed alongside Andalusian Soul, the question is what you seek within their shared warm sweetness. The former may appeal if you are drawn to a combination of rum, resins, and herbs; Arabesque is a candidate if you are looking for tobacco and fruit layered with spices and woods. These are two perfumes to compare by considering what accompanies their sweetness, rather than choosing solely on the basis of the concentrée designation.

Blue Tea: Opening Tea into Floral and Green Scents

Blue Tea is an eau de parfum in the Venezia & Oriente range. The official Japanese website presents butterfly pea herbal tea, with its blue-violet flowers, as the inspiration. Here, an interest in Asian materials leads to an expression of tea in fragrance.

The composition includes nutmeg, magnolia, neroli, rose, maté, vetiver, and musk. Seeing it as a perfume that layers floral and green elements over a tea accord, rather than expecting a direct reproduction of the drink’s smell, gives a clearer focus when trying it. For anyone who imagined rich resins and spices from the bottle’s decoration, it reveals another dimension of the collection.

Maria Callas: The Contrasts of a Singing Voice in a Modern Chypre

Maria Callas is an eau de parfum created to mark the centenary of her birth. Composed by Olivier Pescheux and Yann Vasnier (in Japanese), it expresses the contrasting facets of the singer’s talent, voice, and life as a contemporary chypre.

Lemon, mandarin, and black pepper are combined with a rose-and-blackcurrant accord and neroli, leading into Akigalawood and several woody materials. It is a design in which to focus on the combination of floral radiance and the outlines of woods. Compared with Rosa Moceniga, the choice is between a soft base that brings flowers forward and the contrast of bright flowers with woods. Even when both perfumes contain rose, the purpose for which that rose is expressed differs.

Choose by the Character You Want to Wear, Rather than the Range’s Name

For Nobil Homo, Marco imagines choosing among fragrances as one changes one’s clothes.

“I would like people to use them as they would change their clothes to suit the time, place, and occasion.”

— Marco Vidal

A concrete example is Colonia Veneziana, which combines bergamot, orange, and lemon with rosemary, ginger, clary sage, and iris. Alongside creations that foreground spices and resins, there is also a path to choosing through citrus and herbs. It is important not to equate the ranges’ visual splendor alone with the intensity of all the brand’s fragrances.

The official Japanese website also offers a trial kit containing six different 5mL miniatures from the Murano Collection. It can be used to compare several expressions, including Rosa Moceniga and Andalusian Soul. Blue Tea, Arabesque, and Maria Callas are not among those six, so it is worth choosing how to sample according to the ranges that interest you.

Incidentally, the Founder Likes “the Smell of Horses”

Marco’s interests also appear in the smells he likes outside perfume. He names turpentine, paper, and oil paints. There was also something slightly unexpected.

“Perhaps the most unusual of the smells I like is the smell of horses.”

— Marco Vidal

Painting materials, books, and animals: the smells that attract him are not all renowned perfume ingredients. This small story reveals a personal taste for smells found in daily life and creative spaces behind the work of connecting glass, architecture, textiles, and a singing voice with perfume.