ABSTRACT
Ceramic bowls (bacini) from the Islamic world form a distinctive type of decoration on the eleventh-century churches of Pisa, with hundreds of examples applied to the exteriors of religious structures. The relationship with the Islamic world indexed by the imported bacini was essential in the formation of a unique civic identity for Pisa as the inhabitants of the Tuscan city constructed an ambivalent image of Islamic lands as military adversaries, commercial partners, and cultural role models in a competitive Mediterranean environment, an image that allowed for both coexistence and conflict. The bacini on Pisan churches also display a wide variety of decorative forms, though geometric and vegetal forms predominate. More rarely the ceramics feature representations of humans and animals. Merchants emerged as a distinct social group gradually throughout the Middle Ages. Two final and related characteristics are essential to an understanding of merchant culture: civic pride and art patronage.
