Of Catherine of Aragon to Tudor England

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Chapter 13 The Shoes of an Infanta: Bringing the Sensuous, Not Sensible, “Spanish Style” of Catherine of Aragon to Tudor England

Theresa Earenfight

When Catherine of Aragon (1485–1536) moved to England in 1501 to marry her first husband, the Tudor prince Arthur (1486–1502), she brought shoes. Lots of shoes. Her shoemakers, Diego de Madrid and Diego de Valencia, had started to make her shoes when she was two years old and continued to do so until she left for England at the age of sixteen. That year, 1501, they were very busy men. The detailed accounts of Gonzalo de Baeza, Queen Isabel’s treasurer (continu- ous from Catherine’s birth in 1485 to Isabel’s death in 1504) note that the royal shoemakers crafted fifty-one pairs of soft leather buskins (borçeguies), short boots that came up over her ankles, and sixty-eight pairs of black leather slip- pers (servillas; also spelled xervillas).1 It is likely that her baggage also includ- ed cork-soled platform mules known as chapines, probably covered in velvet and intricate embroidery such as those made for her in 1497: “twelve pairs of chapines from Valencia for the infantas [María and Catherine], six of them one hand high and the other six three fingers high, at 175 [maravedís] each, some of them more, totaling 1,990 [maravedís]” (Figs. 13.1 and 13.2).2 These chapines were a regal variant of shoes that were a staple of Mediterranean societies,

1 Antonio de la Torre and E.A. de la Torre, eds., Cuentas de Gonzalo Baeza, tesorero de Isabel la Católica, 2 vols. (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1955), 2:506, 527. 2 This cork-soled footwear is spelled “chapín” (plural, chapines) in Spanish and “chopine” in English. Unless quoting material, I will use “chapín.” See Elizabeth Semmelhack, On a Pedestal: From Renaissance Chopines to Baroque Heels (Toronto: Bata Shoe Museum, 2009), 10. A maravedí was originally a silver or gold coin, akin to the gold dinar, with a value in 1.91 grams of silver in 1303. By the later Middle Ages, the maravedí was only a unit of account and did not circulate. In 1537 it became the smallest Spanish unit of account, the thirty- fourth part of a real. See Linda Martz, Poverty and Welfare in Habsburg Spain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), xvii. The entry for 1497 specifies payment for “doze pares de chapines de Valenica para las dichas infantas, les seys dellos de vna mano en alto, e los otros seys de tres dedos en alto, a 175 cada par, vnos dellos, que montan 1.990.” See De la Torre and de la Torre, Cuentas de Gonzalo Baeza, 1:368–80.

Figure 13.1 Chopines, Italy, ca. 1550–1650, silk and metal. New York, Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of the Brooklyn Museum, 2009; Gift of Herman Delman, 1955; 2009.300.1494a, b. Width 12.7 × length 22.9 cm

Figure 13.2 Chopines, Spain, ca. 1580–1620, cork and silk damask, with stamped decoration on the insole. London, Victoria and Albert Museum, Gift of Messrs Harrods Ltd., T.419 & A-1913. Width 10 × height 12.5 × length 16 cm