It was a mask used by both men and women and was an obligation for married women who had to go to the theater, while it was forbidden for girls of marriageable age. This was also a mask that allowed to drink and eat without ever having to be removed and the all white one was also called larva, from its Latin meaning of mask or ghost.

One of the most typical Venetian masks was the moretta, an oval mask made of black velvet and used by women who, at least initially, had to hold it up by holding a little button on the back in their mouths, thus becoming mute.

We can also see it in Pietro Longhi’s work “The Rhinoceros”, which you can admire at Ca’ Rezzonico.⠀

Among the most used masks even today there is, for sure, the colombina. This is a mask that embodies the cunning of the handmaidens with its roots in the works of Plautus and then establishing itself again around the 1500s thanks to the Compagnia degli Intronati.

The appearance of the plague doctor’s mask that we know was created by Charles de Lorme, a 17th century French physician.

Although it is now used for Carnival, at the time it was used by doctors to protect themselves from the disease when they visited plague victims.

The mask covered the doctor’s face and the ovals at eye level were protected with two pieces of glass, while the long beak was filled with aromatic herbs able to filter and clean the air breathed by the doctor. Even if today it may seem an unnecessary precaution, at the time there was a widespread doctrine that contagion was due to unhealthy air.