Footware: Shades of Ancient Rome

Roman women don't wear togas (at least not yet). But they do wear the shoes that go with them, or what we imagine to be those shoes--open-toed, tied up across the ankle and up the leg with wide, often criss-crossing straps. We found them in side-walk displays, in the windows of shoe stores, on the feet of Roman women, on the feet of men in a fresco in the the early-16th-century Villa Farnesina (above left), built for Agostino Chigi and located in Trastevere, its back to Lungotevere--even on a 1940 statue in EUR (above right). It proved more difficult than we (in case you haven't figured it out, that means Bill) thought to capture footware in the flesh, so to speak: if the women are moving, they, and their feet, are gone in seconds; if they're standing still, one risks getting caught taking a picture that some women would consider inappropriate. But hey, it's all for science! Bill