The Bauta or Bautta

The bauta is typical mask in Venice during XVIII century. This mask could be wore both during carnival and normal life as common accessory (even if precise limits exist by law)

Principal use is to hide the face and to get not recognizable.

The bauta could have different forms and dimensions (please see followings pics or masks gallery)

During carnival, other masks were used, excessive, with imagination and pompous for official parties, but typical disguise in Venice during XVIII century was the bauta or bautta.

Examples of bauta.

For precious permit of: Tragicomica

Often it is possible to confuse bauta-mask with bauta-disguise.

Bauta as mask really is called "larva" (in the beginning, the mask was black, then white, produced in leather or "papier-maché" or plaster) Bauta as disguise is all elements in ensemble, so: the "larva", the "xendal" or little cone in lace, the tricorn-hat (hat with three-corner) and the mantel, following substituted by "tabarro" (a black wool mantel)

All could mask in Carnival, distinctions of sex and society didn't exist. The bauta allowed maximum freedom and over-all no difference, a respectable and sure anonymity, even when someone met a bauta, it is due and polite to nod to this mask. To avoid more distinctions and to be not recognizable, nobility mixed bauta disguise with people traditions and for this reason rich mantels have been substituted with "tabarro", black wool mantel. Senate and Venetian inquisitors didn't accept this irregular habit.

For many historiographers, Word bauta come from children claims "bau..bau…"and for other historians, from "bava" the name of cone of lace in Venetian dialect.

The Bauta and the others venetian masks