The making of intricate mosaics from colored hardstones (pietre dure) was a technique practiced since antiquity and elevated to a high art form in the grand-ducal workshops of Medici Florence around 1600. This panel was one of eleven that once decorated the walls of a private chapel of the Medici villa in Poggio Imperiale, outside Florence. It shows delicately rendered roses and tulips in a vase set against a black marble background. The borders, however, follow a more traditional form, largely abstract, with plain rectangular panels of Sicilian jasper and banded Sienese agates, to be admired as specimens for their coloring and markings.