There are five tabletops with pietre dure (It. “hard stones”) mosaics in the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts. This term refers to the technique of carving in stone, including the manufacture of inlaid panels of coloured marble and semi-precious stones (commesso di pietre dure).
Often mosaics made in the pietre dure technique were called "painting in stone", a painting that will never fade. Its original source is considered to be the ancient Roman mosaic opus sectile, which was rediscovered in Rome in the 16th century during the excavations of monuments of ancient architecture. Inspired Roman masters of the Renaissance turned to colourful stones and began to create inlaid tabletops of incredible beauty with geometric patterns and symmetrical compositions. These beautiful objects attracted the attention of the Medici family, thanks to whose patronage in Florence they quickly learned about the revived way of working with different types of marble and stones.
In 1588, Ferdinando I Medici (1549-1609) brought together the best masters, including those from the Casino Mediceo di San Marco, and brought them together to form the Grand Duke's Workshop (Galleria dei Lavori). One of the leading areas of the Workshop from the beginning was the development and improvement of its own style and technique of working with stones. Adopting graphic Roman mosaics, artists of Galleria dei Lavori gradually introduced images of plants, animals, birds, made the compositions more dynamic and freer, which corresponded to the new European big style: Baroque.
The workshop grew rapidly, developed a recognizable style of its own and began to work more and more for export, spreading the glory of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany throughout Europe. Esteemed and wealthy families as well as members of ruling dynasties received luxurious diplomatic gifts from the Grand Duke, produced in his own workshop. Collectors were eager to receive the amazing beauty of "Medici-style objects". Since then, mosaics in the technique of pietre dure (and not only) began to be called "Florentine", which is not quite correct today, because with the growing popularity of the style workshops began to open in other cities and countries: each such workshop had its own features, its own name, each belonged to a particular court. Therefore, in order not to be misleading, contemporary academic and popular literature on the topic in all languages uses either the Italian term — pietre dure — or its literal translation.