Italy is a peninsula fortunately placed in the centre of the Mediterranean to take advantage of numerous trade routes linking East and West. Throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the Italian city states imported ceramics from abroad, especially from Syria, Turkey and Spain (parts of which were under Islamic control until 1492). The forms and decoration of early Italian maiolica betray their Islamic origin and, even after Italian artists had developed their own style of ornamentation, Eastern influences were still occasionally apparent. By the mid-fifteenth century porcelain from the Far East and porcelain-like objects from the Islamic world were officially documented in Italian collections and were, therefore, more readily available sources of inspiration for designs.
The manufacture of porcelain was a closely-guarded secret in the Far East. Porcelain objects, therefore, were highly prized and much coveted by collectors in the West, eager to possess and even recreate such precious and inherently mysterious objects. Cafaggiolo, outside Florence, specialised in maiolica (tin-glazed earthenware) with blue and white decoration of scrolling foliage, based on Eastern examples. However, in about 1575 Grand Duke Francesco I de'Medici hired a potter from the Levant and instructed him to produce porcelain. The result was a soft-paste fritware comprising Vicenza clay and ground glass, decorated with hazy painting and eggshell glaze. The production of 'Medici porcelain' did not continue beyond the death of the Grand Duke, in 1587.
The decoration of these wares was indebted to a variety of sources comprising European grotesques, Chinese Porcelain and Iznik pottery, the latter of which incorporated various foliate and floral patterns and began arriving from Turkey by the sixteenth century. At a time when Italian artists had developed their own visual idiom, such imitations of Eastern products testify to the continuing attraction and value of the more exotic product.