I realized something as I gazed today on a classical portrayal of St. Paul preaching yesterday or today or sometime, and that is that it seems to be the custom when religious art is drawn to portray saints without shoes (as this work portrayed St. Paul, and no, sorry, I do not have a link as I forgot where I saw it). Why is this I wonder? This is certainly the case for the icons at my church (although as I look at them, at least two of the full-size icons are not barefoot). Is it more holy to have bare feet? Is that how the people back then really walked? Seems unlikely to me; I thought they wore sandals.
Funny, today going barefoot except if you're going swimming is almost verboten. Certainly you'd never dare do it at an office — even if you could get away with a minimalistic sandal. Once I got a very kind and subtle rebuke (at least I interpreted it as such) for going about work in my socks. And here we are portraying saints in bare feet!
I wish I knew why this was ...
