The invited artist is one of the greatest contemporary sculptors – a pioneer in his innovative use of ceramics and the first artist of Belgian origin to have been given the honour of exhibiting in the Louvre Museum in 2005: Johan Creten. The choice of entrusting him with Venice, a city cherished and often visited by the founders of Diptyque, was obvious. Though equally famous for his large allegorical bronze sculptures, this Paris-based artist also loves nature, the art of perfume and Venetian bronzes, of which he is a passionate collector. “Venice is the city of all fantasies, a mirage, a phantom, a siren – a city with a beauty that’s vivid, brutal, decadent, delirious. It is a place of intersections, of diverse artistic influences, but it is also the reality of a dense, complex economic world, of dynamism and decline.”

For Diptyque, he imagined a bronze sculpture, La Laguna, submerged in a 1.5 kg four-wick candle in a blue-tinted glass vessel. The translucent blue-green wax through which the feminine figure can be seen recalls the ominous Venetian waters of the “acqua alta” (seasonal partial flooding) which have recently become clear again. As it burns, the scented candle – created by Cécile Matton to evoke the freshness of a vegetable garden with accented marine notes – liberates the sculpture. The artist wished to supplement the initial concept of the “the vegetable garden of Venice” with “the scent of the sea, a note of iodine, a light, indefinable fragrance, as fresh as the wind that floats above the water when we pass Torcello in a vaporetto and catch the scents from kitchens and gardens.” For Creten, the way La Laguna seems to emerge gradually from the waters symbolises “the passage of time, the fragility of the Venetian ecosystem and the mystery of Venice.” A memento mori candle par excellence: once used up, it leaves behind a vivid reminder of its passing in a limited edition of 24 keepsake copies: “a small object with its own independent life, calling out and inviting you to dream.”