The Plague Doctor Mask:
Myth or Reality?
PB
When you think of a plague doctor you most likely picture in your mind someone wearing a bird-like beak mask, similar - if not the identical - to the Venetian masks that populate many window shops in Venice. If you browse the web, you will find websites dedicated to the history of Venetian masks that claim that the plague doctor mask differs from all others because it was not just a costume but a real protective equipment used by doctors in time of plague epidemics. But was it really so?
Medieval plague doctors did not use any mask. It is possible that they protected themselves with cloths impregnated with scented substances, which they kept near their mouth. Protective masks started to appear in the seventeenth century. One of the earliest mentions of masks is in the work of the Italian scholar Ludovico Muratori. In 1714, he published On the Management of Plague in which he discussed the protective equipment that doctors and surgeons assisting plague patients should wear. Muratori recommended a gown, preferably made of leather or, in its absence, waxed silk or taffeta, and then mentioned that that “some [doctors or surgeons] sometimes have covered their face with a mask, or bautta, to which they added two crystal eyes”[1]
The bautta (more typically bauta) was a mask that early modern Venitians wore to cover their identity. Various paintings of the time show men an women wearing it. The bauta presented an elongated area below the nose, which is vaguely reminiscent of the “bird nose” of Carnival plague doctor masks. It is interesting that Muratori did not believe that the mask was widely used as protective equipment, and that it was definitely less important for plague doctors than the impermeable gown.
Fig. 2 Pietro Longhi, Il Ridotto, 18th century. The white masks are all examples of bauta.
The myth of the plague doctor mask dates its origin
to 1619. That year, so the story goes, Charles de Lorme (1584-1678), personal physician to various members of the French royal household, invented the mask. De Lorme’s own writings, however, do not mention any mask or other kinds of protection for plague doctors. The only contemporary reference to De Lorme’s alleged invention comes from an often inaccurate biographical account, published in 1682 by Michel de Saint Martin. The biographer tells us that during the 1619 Paris plague, de Lorme designed a special costume made of Moroccan leather, which “he wore, pants-like, from his feet to his head, with a mask of the same leather where he attached a nose, half foot long, to divert the bad air”. [2]
Saint-Martin obtained this information second hand, since he was a child in 1619. It is possible that he, intentionally or not, attributed to de Lorme the invention of an object that, most likely, originated instead in Rome during the plague epidemic of 1656.
It was in Rome that the earliest known visual representation of a plague doctor mask was printed, in 1656. This woodcut likely was the archetype for the similar engravings that carry the same date. It represents, as the caption tells us, “the costume with which the doctors go around Rome”. The caption describes the other elements of the costume: crystal glasses, a “nose” filled with scented substances, and a rod in the hand.
Fig. 3 Habito con il quale vanno i medici per Roma. © The Trustees of the British Museum.
There is more evidence that plague doctor masks were used in Rome around the time of the plague epidemic of 1656.
Johann Lingelbach’s Carnival in Rome, for example, painted around that time, shows two figures that seem to be wearing plague doctor masks.
Fig. 4. Johann Lingelbach, Carnival in Rome (detail), ca. 1650. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. The plague doctor masks can be seen to the left.
The masks in Lingelbach’s painting are similar to models that have been found in the Venice Lazzaretto (plague hospital) and that are now surfacing in various museums, such as the one shown here from the Museum of Medical History in Ingolstadt. It should be noted, however, that the authenticity of these masks is controversial.
Fig. 5 A plague mask, probably from the 17th century, at the Museum of Medical History at Ingolstadt.
Nonetheless, it is intriguing that the plague masks in Lingelbach’s painting do not resemble the popular beak doctor model of the Venice carnival. This model may very well have emerged in Venice as a later material satire against plague doctors. The Venetian mask’s oversized beak is longer than the half foot length mentioned by Saint Martin and it would not have been easy to wear. At a time when satire against doctors was commonplace, one obvious way of making a caricature of the plague doctor was to exaggerate the nose/beak. This was certainly done in print, as the engraving on the left shows.
Carnival was a time of irreverence and open satire, and it is tempting to think that the plague doctor mask with the overstretched nose was developed in Venice as a material equivalent of the caricatures that had circulated in print for decades. The plague doctor’s nose was an easy target for the spirit of Carnival. After all, prendere per il naso, to take by the nose, means to fool.
Fig. 6. A plague doctor in Marseille. Wellcome Digital Collection.
May 2020
[1] Ludovico Muratori, Sul governo della peste (1714), p. 73.
[2] Michel de Saint Martin, Moyens faciles et eprouvez dont M. de Lorme… s’est servi pour vivre près de cent ans (1683), pp. 424-425.