One of the curious items I found on our visit to Venice was the proliferation of masks. These masks were often beautiful, sometimes gaudy, othertimes terrifying, sometimes cartoonish. In fact, in our BnB, above each room, there was a mask, each unique.
I had no idea why masks were so prevalent, so I had to search. The story captivated me and I hope the reasons facinate you as well. Venice was an early hub of merchant activity. The residents of Venice bought and sold items from around the world and became very rich from a healthy dose of capitalism. Early on, it was also a very egalitaritarian society. The masks helped make this so.
In business dealings, residents would wear masks when negotiating from each other or when purchasing from a store. These masks had a number of purposes in these transactions. First, you could negotiate as hard as you wanted to, but would not be able to hold harsh feelings against your counterpart as you wouldn't know who they were. Secondly, it behooved people to maintain a high level of decorum, because you would not know if the person behind the mask was the Doge of Venice or a lowly servant sent on his behalf.
Similarly in social situations, the masks allowed people to be anonymous. Whereas in many places, there was a high level of social hierarchy. With masks and masquerades, men and women would interact with each other and neither would know who they were interacting with. Of course, this also allowed people to behave with impropriety as well. No one would know who was visiting houses of ill repute or if someone was having one or more affairs.
The mask with the long nose, that looks like a raven had a different purpose. We saw this same mask in the Mary King's Close tour in Edinburgh. Doctors who treated victims of various plagues wore this mask, with the beak filled with herbs and flowers meant to filter the air, covering up the smells of the victims.
At some stage, the masks were outlawed because the decadence associated with them had grown to be worse than the benefits of using them. Masks were relegated to just the time before Lent for the Carnival of Venice. This was stopped when Napolean conquered Venice in 1797 and Carnival celebrations stopped. The festival was officially reinstated in the 1970s.
We wrote a few other blogs on Venice.
If you are interested, you can read them below.
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