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A Pair of Little Gilded Shoes: Commission, Cost, and Meaning in Renaissance Footwear*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Michelle O'Malley
Michelle O'Malley*
Affiliation:
University of Sussex
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Abstract

This article focuses on women's luxury footwear to examine issues of economic, material, and familial life in Renaissance Italy. It uses graphic work by Albrecht Dürer to explore footwear design, and draws from disparate sources to propose a new method for evaluating its cost. The article argues that sumptuous footwear was available for a range of prices that are not reflected in surviving payment records, and that it was largely less expensive than moralists and legislators implied. In conclusion, it employs Minerbetti documentation to consider the role particular shoes may have played in developing personal subjectivity.

Type
Studies
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 63 , Issue 1 , Spring 2010 , pp. 45 - 83
Copyright
Copyright © 2010 Renaissance Society of America

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Footnotes

*

This article is the result of the annual exchange of scholars between the Department of Art History at the University of Sussex and the Research Department of the Victoria and Albert Museum. I am grateful for the comments of colleagues on versions of the paper delivered at the Victoria and Albert Museum and at the conference “Everyday Objects” at the University of Birmingham's Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon, 27–30 June 2007. My particular thanks go to Christopher Breward, Elizabeth Currie, and Liz James for their detailed critical reviews of versions of the text; to Anna Melograni for last-minute help with translations; and to the School of Humanities, University of Sussex, for support for reproductions.

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