Commedia dell'arte

'A type of comedy developed in Italy in the 16th and 17th centuries and characterized by improvisation from a standard plot outline and the use of stock characters, often in traditional masks and costumes.'

This was a suggested topic for me to look into because of one of the ideas for my character. As Mudra has no dialogue and communicated using gestures, I decided to go towards the masked appearance of french mime artists. This lead on to this, as Commedia dell'arte is based around masks and is actually where Punch and Judy originated. 

Castagno posits that the exaggeration and distortion of the masks features is typical of the 16th century Italian artistic Renaissance. In the Commedia, the characters within are each given a specific emotion through their masks, for example happiness, sadness, confusion, mockery etc.