Think Cinderella’s a fairytale? Fabled glass slipper is revealed as a joke on royalty
Dec 18, 2022
3 minutes
For hundreds of years, the glass slipper has been synonymous with the tale of Cinderella and her midnight dash home from the ball. Now an academic has traced its 17th-century origins and uncovered a connection to the creation of the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles and the impractical fashions and fads of French aristocrats.
“The glass slipper is a witty joke,” said Genevieve Warwick, professor of the history of art at the University of Edinburgh. It was intended. “No one could actually walk, let alone dance, in shoes made of glass.”
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