Wide view of Venice: Piazza San Marco - Riva degli Schiavoni

The MUFF

Hand protection in the cold Venetian winter

Cesare Vecellio "Moderne Venetiane" - woodcut (1598)
Very likely the first image depicting the muff for handing warming
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo : "Caricature of a cavalier holding a muff"
black chalk, brown ink, pen and brown wash (1711-1770)
LEFT - Cesare Vecellio "Moderne Venetiane" - woodcut (1598)
Possibly the first Venetian image depicting
the muff for hands warming
RIGHT - Giovanni Battista Tiepolo:
"Caricature of a cavalier holding a muff"
black chalk, brown ink, pen and brown wash (1711-1770)

The use of the muff in Venice may have been just fashion, but it could also have been a real lifesaving habit in those times.

The muff use seems to have originated in Venice, in the end of the XVI century, as the Cesare Vecellio image of the Moderne Venetiane is the first documentation about its use, and it was elegant already.

A little later the muff use hit the rest of Europe, and it became a trend. We can well imagine how in those cold winters it was making the ladies' lives way better, and not the ladies only, since - as much as it was a lady's cherished accessory - men used it too, why not.

We can see men using it in quite a good number of images, although Tiepolo's drawings could be about making a tease about muff-ed men.

And we have the Moretta mask using it, as much as the Poet, but this last one is a mockery for sure.


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