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This romanticized view of rural life with picturesque details such as the gnarled tree reflects the influence of French decorative art and engravings on Italian ceramics at this period. This is also true of the pastel colors (grey-blue, grey-green and copper-green, yellow, ochre, and manganese, heightened with gold) that result in a watercolor-like effect. The marli (broad, flat border rim) is decorated with two putti (naked toddlers that amusingly act above their age), a rooster, a bird, insects and flowers within serpentine leaf scrolls. The imagery is characteristic of Carlo Antonio Grue’s work at the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth century. For more on the Grue family see no. 48.1755; for more works by Carlo Antonio, click on his name in the “creator” field; for information on "maiolica," see 48.1336.