This ewer is among the most fantastically and elaborately sculptural examples of Urbino maiolica of the later sixteenth century. Its elaborately moulded shape is in the spirit of the fantastic objects in carved hardstone and precious metal made by Jacques Bylivert and Bernardo Buontalenti in the Granducal workshops of Florence for successive Medici Grand-Dukes of Tuscany, during the second half of the sixteenth century. Objects like this would have been intended purely for display.