Italian silk-weaving reached its first great apogee in the fifteenth century. Cities like Lucca, Venice or Florence rose to become leading hubs for luxury textile production and trade. They were competing with the traditional silk-weaving centres of the Near East, Persia and China, whose technical and artistic innovative potential they soon surpassed. The patterns created are remarkable for their extraordinary dynamism, expressive potency and monumentality and to this day count among the greatest achievements of European ornamental design