This pair of pietra dura plaques, notable for their distinctive use of Sicialian jasper to depict rolling hills and of lapis lazuli for the sky above, relate to a group of three in the Museo dell'Opificio delle Pietre Dure (ill. A. Giusti, W. Koeppe, Art of the Royal Court: Treasures in Pietre Dure from the Palaces of Europe, 2008, p. 152, no. 27). The group were intended to decorate an altar-ciborium which Ferdinand I de' Medici commissioned as a centrepiece for the Capella dei Principi, the Medici family's mausoleum in Florence. Despite the fervent work which began in 1599, before even work of the chapel had begun, the altar was never completed, and in about 1780 it was dismantled on the request of the Grand Dukes of Habsburg-Lorraine. Following this many of the panels were widely dispersed, and it is quite possible that the present plaques were once part of the same group.

Extant documents suggest that the altar was a majestic display of the Grand Ducal Workshops' skill, and that the three plaques mentioned above depicted Tuscan vedute. Further documents dating from between 1607-1608 record that the painter Bernardino Poccetti supplied three designs for the plaques to the stonecutters Francesco di Gaspero Salina and Camillo di Ottaviano. Much like the present plaque, Poccetti's designs showed Tuscan landscaped populated with the facades of small churches, hilltop villages and cypress trees swaying in the breeze.

These works exemplify the connection between patrons, artists and stone cutters which so defines pietra dura as an art form, and it is entirely possible that these plaques are also executed by Salina and Ottaviano after designs by Poccetti.

THE GRAND DUCAL WORKSHOPS
The Medici passion for hardstones and intarsia began under Cosimo I Medici (1519-1574) who acquired numerous works in pietra dura from Rome, the centre of lapidary production in the 16th century. While there were artisans of pietra dura in and around Florence from around 1550, it was only under Cosimo’s sons Francesco I (1541-1587) and Fernando I de Medici (1539-1609) that Florence was able to compete with and eventually exceed the output of the Eternal City. Fernando I founded the Grand Ducal pietre dure manufactory, known as the ‘Galleria dei Lavori’, in 1588. The workshops would provide works of art in hardstones and porphyry not only for Grand Ducal commissions but also for foreign princes and collectors and from its early stages it distinguished itself from the Roman lapidaries for its varied production and particularly its specialism in scenes uniting nature, art and science. While Florentine pietra dura utilised stones occurring naturally in Tuscany, such as pietra paesina and Alberese, the workshops also imported valuable and costly stones from across Italy and Europe, including Sicilian jasper, Bohemian agate and black marble from Flanders. Plaques to be incorporated into cabinets, caskets, clocks, tabletops and panels for display produced by the Florentine workshops depicted complex images including birds, vases of flowers, landscapes, narrative scenes and trophies which differed from the geometric patterns favoured in Rome. The Grand Ducal Workshops attracted skilled artisans and designers from across Italy and Europe including gem-cutters from Milan and cabinetmakers from Germany and the Low Countries. Superintendents of the Galleria dei Lavori included celebrated draughtsmen and designers like Jacopo Ligozzi (1547-1627) and Giovanni Battista Foggini (1652-1725), the latter who, under the auspices of Cosimo III (1670-1723), originated rich baroque designs often incorporating flowers and birds on black paragone grounds, the culmination of which can be considered the famous Badminton Cabinet. The death of Gian Gastone (d. 1737), the last Medici Grand Duke did not spell the end of the Grand Ducal Workshops but from the mid-18th century the baroque repertoire of the manufactory, now under Habsburg control, was exchanged for realistic figures and landscapes based closely on formal paintings by artists like Giuseppe Zocchi (fl. 1750-67) and eventually for neoclassical compositions with the approach of the 19th century, by which point the workshops were known as the Opificio delle pietre dure, the name it retains to this day.