The painted decoration of this bowl includes a depiction of St Peter of Verona, patron of inquisitors and midwives, a celebrated early Dominican preacher in northern and central Italy who was martyred by heretics in the mid thirteenth century. His attribute is the knife blade which split his skull and killed him. Peter’s tomb in Milan became a pilgrimage shrine, and maiolica objects such as this one, bearing images of saints, sometimes functioned as pilgrimage souvenirs. Such objects may also have served to introduce images of exemplary figures into the home, providing models of appropriate moral and religious conduct.