In The Age of Louis XIV (1751), Voltaire mentions, during the detention on the island of Sainte-Marguerite, "a mask having a chin strap with iron springs, which enabled him to eat with the mask on his face."
Thus the iron mask, as depicted in the film The Man in the Iron Mask by Randall Wallace (1998), may only be a legend, a "dramatic extension" originating from the "chin strap with iron springs" [REF].