Masked Food

The Venice Carnival has always been a grand celebration of pleasure—and culinary delights are inseparably linked to these traditional festivities. For several months leading up to Lent, Carnival was a time of excess, both in the abundance and richness of food, from noble dishes to fried delicacies. These scenes of indulgence unfolded both in the streets and in private apartments. It is in the secret intimacy of some of these palaces that the banquet we will explore took place: an extraordinary trompe-l’œil meal where “the real was a voluptuous moment of the fake.”