The Cod-piece—A Renaissance Fashion between Sign and Artefact

Abstract

The cod-piece, an article of male fashion during the Renaissance, has been interpreted by scholarship in divergent ways. This article assesses these interpretations against the yardstick of contemporary sources, both textual and pictorial. The apparently paradoxical situation, wherein a number of voices during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries condemned the cod-piece as being a lewd object, while at the same time numerous contemporary portraits that represented their subjects with prominent cod-pieces were in no way perceived as offensive, can only be explained by moving away from the simplistic and unequivocal meanings that have till now been ascribed to this piece of men's clothing. The article argues for a closer contextual reading of the object whose multilayered significations are embedded within the alterity of another epoch. Finally, it raises the question as to whether this paradox could be a useful point of entry to assessing notions of shame and modesty during the Renaissance.