Italian Chopine

This rare Italian chopine dates to the late sixteenth century. Constructed with a wooden platform covered with gold velvet and embellished with silver lace and tacks around the base, it is an excellent example of a modestly high chopine of the period. Some of the more extreme examples elevated wearers by as much as fifty four centimetres (twenty-one inches). Italian chopines were worn completely concealed under women’s skirts and required the consumption of more textile in the making of women’s skirts and therefore aided in the expression of family wealth through female attire.