During the European Middle Ages, plaster continued as a craft but was largely diminished as an art. With few exceptions, the prevailing Romanesque and Gothic architecture principally utilized stone both for construction and ornamentation. However, by the Late Middle Ages, a significant societal shift was underway. The Moors had established themselves as the dominant cultural force on the Iberian Peninsula. Islamic architecture, which originated a decoration based on an interlaced geometry of the infinite as well as a formalized depiction of natural vegetal forms, “the Arabesque,” culminated in triumphant fervor with the completion of the great Alhambra palace in the 14th century. The prominent artistic medium was plaster.
The magnificence of Islamic art certainly did not go unnoticed in Western Europe. It perhaps served as the final impulse for the Early Renaissance dawning in the Republic of Florence at the close of the 14th century. The Florentines looked back to a glorious Imperial past drawing inspiration to reassert their own cultural values. One Florentine family in particular, the Medici, established a unique liaison between wealth, power and patronage of the arts.