ABSTRACT
On Athenian painted pottery most figures are represented barefoot so the occasional appearance of boots, shoes and sandals is of significance. Footwear is not gender specific nor is it necessarily related to status and it is depicted in a variety of different contexts. This chapter takes a large red-figure drinking cup in the Shefton Collection (inventory number 53, 470–460 bc) as a starting point to explore the appearance of sandals suspended in the background in a variety of different images from vase-painting, across a range of shapes. On the Shefton kylix the sandals are represented in a scene of heterosexual courtship but they occur also in images of pederastic courtship. In a masculine context the suspended sandals appear at the intersection of four major themes: athletics, education, drinking and pederasty. In images of women alone, in a domestic setting, the meaning of the suspended sandal is more problematical; here the social status of the women is often ambiguous and associated attributes can be read in different ways. This chapter argues that close analysis of the contexts within which sandals appear suspended on painted pottery facilitates an understanding of the attribute, which, albeit polysemic, translates to a nexus of interrelated themes.
