We all associate February with Carnival, a holiday that is still very much felt throughout the peninsula. However, there are some cities in which this occasion becomes an evocative celebration: this is the case of the Venice Carnival. The city is filled with pancakes, costumes and above all masks. Masks are a tradition of Venetian craftsmanship and there are many types, among these one stands out which, although less sumptuous than others, is one of the most intriguing for what it can tell: the Moretta, mute or mute servant girl is a small female Venetian mask of oval shape, in black velvet, without a cut of the mouth and worn mainly between the 17th and 18th centuries.
There Moretta it is an enigmatic and fascinating mask, a symbol of seduction and mystery in the carnival of the Serenissima of the past, a suggestive emblem of an era in which clothing represented a world of social codes. The Moretta, also known as a silent servant, is characterized by an elegant oval shape covered in black velvet. It immediately distinguishes itself from other Venetian masks for its sobriety and for the fact that it was held close to the face not by ribbons or laces, but biting a small button held between his teeththus rendering the bearer unable to speak. Its use was exclusive to women.
But why did the bearer have to be condemned to mutism? It was not a simple aesthetic quirk, the silence gave it a symbolic and relational meaning. The Moretta, in fact, was born in France in the 16th century, where the visarda black velvet mask, worn for the main purpose of protecting the skin from the sun and maintaining pallor (a sign of nobility and decorum). In Venice, however, it became an accessory loved by high-class, noble or wealthy women, who wanted to hide their identity at the same time and make non-verbal communication more intense, through their eyes and demeanor.
The decision to prevent the bearer from speaking accentuated the gaze, transforming eyes and gestures into powerful means of communication during ceremonies and social gatherings. In an era in which the female body and voice were often subject to rigid behavioral norms, Moretta presented a cultural paradox because if on the one hand she seemed to take away power, on the other she was its spokesperson, making the woman the silent protagonist of a language made up of proxemics, gestures and movements.
The manufacture of the Moretta was part of the rich Venetian artisan tradition of mask production: i mascarers they were producing it in their workshops as early as the eighteenth century, often together with other costumes and fine fabrics. Like many other Venetian masks – for example Bauta and Gnaga – its use was not limited to Carnival, but was also used during public and private events, which involved some type of socialization among the wealthy classes. In these contexts the mask allowed women to move in masked spaces with a certain autonomy and symbolic protection.
The fact that the Moretta makes the wearer mute can be read as deprivation, but it also has the characteristic of silently maintaining its presence in a context in which the word – wrong – could be an element of vulnerability or attack. Even today the Moretta fascinates not only for its shape, but for its ability to evoke a historical dimension in which identity and communication were shaped as much by appearance as by silence and represents one of the most interesting and least celebrated fruits of the Venetian masquerade tradition.
