Shoes star in the exhibition At the Feet of the Gods at the Pitti Palace

The Fashion and Costume Museum of Palazzo Pitti presents from December 17, 2019 to April 19, 2020 the exhibition Ai piedi degli dei, curated by Lorenza Camin, Caterina Chiarelli and Fabrizio Paolucci.

Through about eighty works, some of them from important international museums such as the Louvre, the exhibition aims to recount the infinite roles that the shoe has played in the West from ancient times to the present day. Protagonists will be specimens of the most significant types of footwear used between the fifth century B.C. and the fourth century A.D., both as works of art, including reliefs and painted vases, and as artifacts from the Roman fort at Vindolanda in northern England.

The ancient is placed in direct confrontation with the contemporary: shoes by some of the greatest designers (such as Genny, Céline, Richard Tyler, Renè Caovilla, Donna Karan) will be displayed alongside original models made by the most famous Italian manufacture of footwear for the cinema, the Pompei shoe factory, for some of the peplum films that have become true cults; Liz Taylor-Cleopatra’s sandals, Charlton Heston-Ben Hur’s shoes, Gladiator Russell Crowe’s, Alexander-Colin Farrell’s calighettes will be on display. In addition, the multivision, conceived and directed by Gianmarco D’Agostino, will take visitors through archaeology, fashion, and myths of the silver screen.

“Man has always wanted to pour into footwear, a humble and everyday tool, a reflection of those principles of harmony and symmetry that governed classical taste. The shoe thus became itself a work of art, an object shaped more for aesthetic than practical needs. Precisely in order to fully illustrate this ’destiny’ of the shoe, the assumptions of which are already in the Greco-Roman world, we wanted to broaden the theme of this exhibition to include two expressions of contemporary culture that are intimately linked: cinema and fashion. Under the sign of classicism, the curators explored this unprecedented aspect of the ’Fortune of Antiquity,’ recovering suggestions, echoes and consonances that, through the films of movies such as Cleopatra and the inspiration of fashion designers, create an unexpected link between past and contemporary,” said the director of the Uffizi Galleries, Eike Schmidt.

“The shoe is not just an accessory, and this concept was well understood by the ancients, as was the skill required to make them. Plato, for example, did not hesitate to call the shoemaker’s art a true science. By its style or colors, this garment told everything about the person who wore them: gender, economic status, social position and work. What has always been considered a simple detail of clothing now becomes the protagonist of an exhibition, the purpose of which is precisely to restore to the shoe its role as a precious document of the taste and technique of the Greco-Roman world,” added Fabrizio Paolucci, curator of the exhibition and director of the Uffizi Antiquities Department.

Shoes star in the exhibition At the Feet of the Gods at the Pitti Palace

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