Feet of the Renaissance

Feet. They have been on earth for thousands of years and outnumber humans about 2:1. There are many different shapes, sizes and types. Over the centuries people have tried to change them, from strapping toes in China to forcing half the foot far too high to be comfortable, creating blisters, rubs, painful feet and legs in the obsession women have today with high heeled shoes. Some people love them, some people hate them. Though perhaps not the prettiest things to look at they serve an incredibly important role in our day to day lives. But rather than thanking them for carrying around our bodies all day, we usually just forget about them.

I was among the many people who are not so fond of their feet mostly due to a larger than normal gap that I have between by first and second toe which never seems to go unnoticed. Once I was even asked if I had had my second toe amputated! To that I politely answered that no I have never had 6 toes or any feet operations thank you very much. The only time my toe gap has ever been useful is in summer when I am able to wear jandals (flip-flops) with ease and always managed to avoid in-between- the-toe blisters.

I am sure by now anyone reading this is completely confused why I am writing about feet on my travel blog, but patience, please. It is related to travel and all will be revealed shortly. But first I want to quickly discuss an image that made the round on Facebook a few years ago about feet. It showed different foot and toe shapes and stated that each one had either or Roman, Celtic, Greek, Egyptian or Germanic heritage and if you had that shape, well that was likely to be your ancient family. I found though none had the toe gap, mine was probably closet to the Egyptians. I would have preferred to be told it was a Roman shape but I guess you can’t choose your heritage.

 

Feet Heritage Image

 

I had naturally completely forgotten about this image and the fact that I was possibly from an ancient line of Egyptians when this thought was brought back to me in perhaps the strangest of places; the Louvre, Paris. A few weeks ago I wrote a blog about my weekend in Paris during which Laura and I spent a few hours at the Louvre. We had been looking at the statues for some time when all of a sudden Laura gasped.

“Belinda!” she said, dragging me over to some statue of an old man I had already seen, “he has your feet!”

.. “What!?”

“He has your feet. Look a skinny big toe and a big gap!”

“Yeah.. Thanks..” I monotoned, but looked anyway. And she was right, he did! There, expertly carved into the marble was my foot. A slightly too high arch which led down to a slim big toe giving the impression of length. Then between the first and second toes was my perfect-for-jandals toe gap before the rest of the slim toes slopped gradually down. Having seen this I decided to check the toes of the other surrounding statues and to my surprise and delight almost every sculpture had my foot. Feeling rather pleased with my feet and their anatomy, I let them carry me past the sculptures to the next room which was filled with paintings from a similar time. And there again, painted on old canvas were men and women alike, whether in scenes of war, extravagance or even in the heavens, all modelling my feet.

 

My Foot in Stone

 

My Foot in Stone

My Actually Foot (for reference!)



My Foot - Painted!

Once home again in Italy I became curious whether the sculptures and paintings here also happened to have my feet. Looking back on my old photos of sculptures and paintings and with a bit of help from Mr. Google I found that they did. In Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam both Adam and God modelled the toe-gap, as did the philosophers in Raphael’s School of Athens. I even found that arguably the most famous sculpture in the world, David himself, also had toe-gapped feet.

 

The Creation of Adam



School of Athens



David's Feet

Then, as luck would have it, whilst trying to find evidence of my feet in Italy, I found something that I was not expecting. A clearer origin of my feet which I felt fitted better than that picture stating they were Egyptian, and which seemed to indicate a more Roman heritage after all. I found that the paintings and the sculptures in which my feet appeared most obviously was in that of the Renaissance art. The Renaissance Era (meaning re-birth in French), it turns out, was a period of time from about the 14^th to the 17^th century. It was an era which principally fulfils its name in being a time of new ideas, philosophies, culture, music, self-awareness, and basically a time when art became unbelievably beautiful and just pretty much amazing. It was the time of Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, and William Shakespeare. And where did this start? In Italy of course! And where in Italy? Well, just an hour from where my toe-gapped-feet now live, in the beautiful city of Florence. So somehow, in an incredibly unrelated turn of events it would appear that my uncommon feet have returned home to their place of origin!

Just like that all those years of hating my toe gap have disappeared. I have decided here and now that if anyone again ever joked about my toe I would tell them, go to Italy. Go to Florence and look at the Renaissance art, look at Michelangelo’s David, go to Rome and study Raphael’s School of Athens in the Vatican. So while you may laugh, it me and not you that has the feet of the Renaissance!