Chopine

Chopine
Line art drawing of a chopine.

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 the shoes and dress from mud and street soil.

Chopines were popularly worn in Venice by both courtesans and patrician women from ca. 1400-1700. Besides their 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 literally and figuratively tower over others. During the Renaissance, chopines became an article of women's fashion and were made increasingly taller; some extant examples are over 20 inches (50 cm) high.[2] 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.

According to some scholars, chopines caused an unstable and inelegant gait. Women wearing them were generally accompanied by a servant or attendant on whom they could balance themselves.[3] Other scholars have argued that with practice a woman could walk and even dance gracefully.[4] In his dancing manual Nobilità di dame (1600), the Italian dancing master Fabritio Caroso writes that with care a woman practiced in wearing her chopines could move “with grace, seemliness, and beauty” and even "dance flourishes and galliard variations".[5] Chopines were usually put on with the help of two servants.

In the 15th century, chopines were also the style in Spain. Their popularity in Spain was so great that the larger part of the nation's cork supplies went towards production of the shoes. Some argue that the style originated in Spain, as there are many extant examples and a great amount of pictorial and written reference going back to the 14th century [6] Chopines of the Spanish style were more often conical and symmetric, while their Venetian counterparts are much more artistically carved. 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 deal of cognates of the word chopine (chapiney, choppins, etc.), however neither the word chopine nor any word similar to it (chioppino, cioppino, etc.) appears in either Florio's 1598 or 1611 dictionary. The Italian word, instead, seems to be "zoccoli," which likely 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.

Sources

References

  1. ^ Coryat Thomas, Crudities (London, 1611) ed. 1905, p. 400
  2. ^ The tallest extant chopines are in the Museo Correr in Venice, Italy.
  3. ^ Skiles Howard, The Politics of Courtly Dancing in Early Modern England (Amherst, Mass.: University of Massachusetts Press, 1998), pp. 101-102.
  4. ^ Barbara Ravelhofer, The Early Stuart Masque: Dance, Costume, and Music, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 113, fn 47.
  5. ^ Fabritio Caroso, Nobilità di dame (Venice, 1600), translated as Courtly Dance of the Renaissance: Nobilità di dame, ed. and trans. Julia Sutton and F. Marian Walker (New York, 1995), p. 141.
  6. ^ Anderson, Ruth Matilda. Hispanic costume, 1480-1530.

Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Поможем решить контрольную работу

Look at other dictionaries:

  • chopine — [ ʃɔpin ] n. f. • fin XIIe; all. Schoppen 1 ♦ Ancienne mesure de capacité contenant la moitié d un litre. Mod. (Canada) Mesure de capacité pour les liquides valant une demi pinte, ou deux demiards, soit 0,568 litre. 2 ♦ Fam. Demi bouteille de vin …   Encyclopédie Universelle

  • chopine — CHOPINE. s. f. Vaisseau qui sert d ordinaire à mesurer le vin, & qui contient la moitié d une pinte. Chopine d estain. Il se prend aussi pour la mesure & la quantité de vin qui est contenuë dans la chopine. Il boit ordinairement chopine à son… …   Dictionnaire de l'Académie française

  • chopine — CHOPINE. s. f. Sorte de vaisseau qui sert d ordinaire à mesurer le vin, et qui contient la moitié d une pinte. Chopine d étain. [b]f♛/b] Il se prend aussi pour La mesure et la quantité de vin qui est contenue dans la chopine. Il boit… …   Dictionnaire de l'Académie Française 1798

  • Chopine — Cho*pine , n. [Cf. OF. chapin, escapin, Sp. chapin, Pg. chapim.] A clog, or patten, having a very thick sole, or in some cases raised upon a stilt to a height of a foot or more. [Variously spelt {chioppine}, {chopin}, etc.] [1913 Webster] Your… …   The Collaborative International Dictionary of English

  • Chopine — (fr., spr. Schopine), 1) kleines altfranzösisches Maß zu Flüssigkeiten: in Paris 1/2 Pinte; in Lyons so w. Feuillette; in St. Denis = 1 Pinte; 2) im französischen Glashandel die halben Bouteillen …   Pierer's Universal-Lexikon

  • Chopine — (franz., spr. schopīn , vom deutschen Schoppen), altfranz. Flüssigkeitsmaß, in Paris 1/2 Pinte = 0,465 Lit.; in Kneipen soviel wie halbe Flasche …   Meyers Großes Konversations-Lexikon

  • Chopine — (spr. schópihn), das deutsche Schoppen, altfranz. Flüssigkeitsmaß = 0,465 l …   Kleines Konversations-Lexikon

  • Chopine — (Schopihn), franz. Flüssigkeitsmaß = 113/4 par. Kubikzoll …   Herders Conversations-Lexikon

  • chopine — Chopine, f. penac. Est une espece de mesure de vin, laquelle contient deux demis sextiers, et fait la moitie de la pinte, et n est seulement mesure de liquides, ains d aucuns arides aussi, voyez Pinte. Aucuns le rendent Cheopina, le tirans de ces …   Thresor de la langue françoyse

  • chopine — [chō pēn′, chäp′in] n. [Sp chapin < ?] a woman s shoe with a very thick sole, as of cork, worn in the 16th and 17th cent …   English World dictionary

  • Chopine —  Cet article concerne la bière. Pour la chaussure, voir Chopine (chaussure) Chopines Une chopine est un verre à bière et une mesure de cap …   Wikipédia en Français

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”