A chopine is a type of women's platform shoe that was popular in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries. Chopines were originally used as a patten, clog, or overshoe to protect shoes and dresses from mud and street soil.
In Venice both courtesans and patrician women frequently wore chopines c. 1400 to 1700. Besides practical uses, the height of the chopine became a symbolic reference to the cultural and social standing of the wearer; the higher the chopine, the higher the status of the wearer. [1] High chopines allowed a woman to tower over others. During the Renaissance, chopines became an article of women's fashion and were made increasingly taller; some extant examples exceed 50 cm (20 inches) in height. [2] In 1430 a Venetian law limited the height of chopines to three inches, but this regulation was widely ignored. [3] Shakespeare joked about the extreme height of the chopines in style in his day by using the word altitude ( Hamlet 2.2, the prince greets one of the visiting players – the adolescent boy who would have played the female parts in the all-male troupe – by noting how much "nearer to heaven" the lad had grown since he last saw him "by the altitude of a chopine").
Surviving chopines are typically made of wood or cork, and those in the Spanish style were sometimes banded about with metal. Extant pieces are covered with leather, brocades, or jewel-embroidered velvet. Often, the fabric of the chopine matched the dress or the shoe, but not always. Despite being highly decorated, chopines often remained hidden under the wearer's skirt, unavailable for any critical observation, but the design of the shoes caused the wearer to have a very "comical walk". [4] [5]
According to some scholars, chopines caused an unstable and inelegant gait. Noblewomen wearing them might need two servants in order to walk around safely - her ladyship could support herself on the servants' shoulders. [6] Other scholars have argued that with practice a woman could walk and even dance gracefully. [7] In his dancing manual Nobilità di dame (1600), the Italian dancing-master Fabritio Caroso writes that with care a woman practised in wearing her chopines could move "with grace, seemliness, and beauty" and even "dance flourishes and galliard variations". [8] Chopines were usually put on with the help of two servants.
In the 15th century, chopines were also in style in Spain. Their popularity in Spain was so great that the larger part of the country's cork supplies went towards production of the shoes. Some argue that the style originated in Spain, [9] as there are many extant examples and a great amount of pictorial and written reference going back to the 14th century. Chopines of the Spanish style were more often conical and symmetric, while their Venetian counterparts are much more artistically carved. Turkish sources claim the origin of the ornate Venetian chopines were nalins developed for Turkish baths. [10] That is not to say, however, that Spanish chopines were not adorned; on the contrary, there is evidence of jeweling, gilt lettering along the surround (the material covering the cork or wooden base), tooling, and embroidery on Spanish chopines.
There are a great many cognates of the word "chopine" ("chapiney", "choppins", etc.). The term chopine itself appears to come from Old Spanish chapín via Middle French. (Neither the word "chopine" nor any word similar to it (chioppino, cioppino, etc.) appears in Florio's Italian/English dictionaries of either 1598 or 1611. The Renaissance Italian equivalent, instead, seems to be zoccolo [11] (English plural: clogs), which likely[ original research? ] comes from the Italian word zocco, meaning a stump or a block of wood. Florio does, however, use the word "chopinos" in his English definition of zoccoli.)
The galliard was a form of Renaissance dance and music popular all over Europe in the 16th century. It is mentioned in dance manuals from England, Portugal, France, Spain, Germany, and Italy.
Footwear refers to garments worn on the feet, which typically serve the purpose of protection against adversities of the environment such as wear from rough ground; stability on slippery ground; and temperature.
Lace is a delicate fabric made of yarn or thread in an open weblike pattern, made by machine or by hand. Generally, lace is split into two main categories, needlelace and bobbin lace, although there are other types of lace, such as knitted or crocheted lace. Other laces such as these are considered as a category of their specific craft. Knitted lace, therefore, is an example of knitting. This article considers both needle lace and bobbin lace.
Jacopo Robusti, best known as Tintoretto, was an Italian Renaissance painter of the Venetian school. His contemporaries both admired and criticized the speed with which he painted, and the unprecedented boldness of his brushwork. For his phenomenal energy in painting he was termed il Furioso. His work is characterised by his muscular figures, dramatic gestures and bold use of perspective, in the Mannerist style.
Clogs are a type of footwear that has a thick, rigid sole typically made of wood, although in American English, shoes with rigid soles made of other materials are also called clogs.
Historical dance is a term covering a wide variety of Western European-based dance types from the past as they are danced in the present. Today historical dances are danced as performance, for pleasure at themed balls or dance clubs, as historical reenactment, or for musicological or historical research.
Geta are traditional Japanese footwear resembling flip-flops. A kind of sandal, geta have a flat wooden base elevated with up to three "teeth", held on the foot with a fabric thong, which keeps the foot raised above the ground.
The Republic of Venice, officially the Most Serene Republic of Venice and traditionally known as La Serenìssima, was a sovereign state and maritime republic with its capital in Venice. Founded, according to tradition, in 697 by Paolo Lucio Anafesto, over the course of its 1,100 years of history it established itself as one of the major European commercial and naval powers. Initially extended in the Dogado area, during its history it annexed a large part of Northeast Italy, Istria, Dalmatia, the coasts of present-day Montenegro and Albania as well as numerous islands in the Adriatic and eastern Ionian seas. At the height of its expansion, between the 13th and 16th centuries, it also governed the Peloponnese, Crete and Cyprus, most of the Greek islands, as well as several cities and ports in the eastern Mediterranean.
Platform shoes are shoes, boots, or sandals with a thick sole, usually in the range of 5–10 cm (2–4 in). Platform shoes may also be high heels, in which case the heel is raised significantly higher than the ball of the foot. Extreme heights, of both the sole and heel, can be found in fetish footwear such as ballet boots, where the sole may be up to 20 cm (8 in) high and the heels up to 40 cm (16 in) or more. The sole of a platform shoe can have a continuous uniform thickness, have a wedge, a separate block or a stiletto heel. Raising the ankle increases the risk of a sprained ankle.
High-heeled shoes, also known as high heels, are a type of shoe with an upward-angled sole. The heel in such shoes is raised above the ball of the foot. High heels cause the legs to appear longer, make the wearer appear taller, and accentuate the calf muscle.
Giovanni Picchi was an Italian composer, organist, lutenist, and harpsichordist of the early Baroque era. He was a late follower of the Venetian School, and was influential in the development and differentiation of instrumental forms which were just beginning to appear, such as the sonata and the ensemble canzona; in addition he was the only Venetian of his time to write dance music for harpsichord.
Casanova is a 2005 American romance film directed by Lasse Hallström starring Heath Ledger and loosely based on the life of Giacomo Casanova. The film premiered September 3, 2005, at the Venice Film Festival. It received mixed reviews and flopped at the box office.
Fashion in the period 1550–1600 in European clothing was characterized by increased opulence. Contrasting fabrics, slashes, embroidery, applied trims, and other forms of surface ornamentation remained prominent. The wide silhouette, conical for women with breadth at the hips and broadly square for men with width at the shoulders had reached its peak in the 1530s, and by mid-century a tall, narrow line with a V-lined waist was back in fashion. Sleeves and women's skirts then began to widen again, with emphasis at the shoulder that would continue into the next century. The characteristic garment of the period was the ruff, which began as a modest ruffle attached to the neckband of a shirt or smock and grew into a separate garment of fine linen, trimmed with lace, cutwork or embroidery, and shaped into crisp, precise folds with starch and heated irons.
The Carnival of Venice is an annual festival held in Venice, Italy, famous throughout the world for its elaborate costumes and masks. The Carnival ends on Shrove Tuesday, which is the day before the start of Lent on Ash Wednesday.
Fashion in 15th-century Europe was characterized by a surge of experimentation and regional variety, from the voluminous robes called houppelandes with their sweeping floor-length sleeves to the revealing giornea of Renaissance Italy. Hats, hoods, and other headdresses assumed increasing importance, and were draped, jeweled, and feathered.
Italian folk dance has been an integral part of Italian culture for centuries. Dance has been a continuous thread in Italian life from Dante through the Renaissance, the advent of the tarantella in Southern Italy, and the modern revivals of folk music and dance.
Venetian painting was a major force in Italian Renaissance painting and beyond. Beginning with the work of Giovanni Bellini and his brother Gentile Bellini and their workshops, the major artists of the Venetian school included Giorgione, Titian, Tintoretto (1518–1594), Paolo Veronese (1528–1588) and Jacopo Bassano (1510–1592) and his sons. Considered to give primacy to colour over line, the tradition of the Venetian school contrasted with the Mannerism prevalent in the rest of Italy. The Venetian style exerted great influence upon the subsequent development of Western painting.
The history of Italian fashion is a chronological record of the events and people that impacted and evolved Italian fashion into what it is today. From the Middle Ages, Italian fashion has been popular internationally, with cities in Italy producing textiles like velvet, silk, and wool. During the Middle Ages and Renaissance, Italian fashion for both men and women was extravagant and expensive, but the fashion industry declined during the industrialization of Italy. Many modern Italian fashion brands were founded in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and in the 1950s and 1960s, Italian fashion regained popularity worldwide. While many clients of Italian fashion designers are celebrities, Italian fashion brands also focus on ready-to-wear clothes.
Self-Portrait is an oil on canvas self-portrait by the Venetian painter Titian, dated c. 1546–47. While he painted a number of independent self-portraits in various formats, this is one of only two painted examples to survive. The other is in Madrid, dated c. 1560. Both share a somber and reserved palette, although this example is richer in tonal variation and colour harmonisation.
This is an alphabetical index of articles related to the Renaissance.
Hidden under skirts, the shoes remained safe from scrutiny, but they resulted in a very comical walk.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)Hoisted upon such shoes, noblewomen had to support themselves between the shoulders of two servants in order to get around safely.