Giovanni Pontano alludes to the beauty of gifts, their unique ornamentation (discussed in the next chapter) and the value of rarity. Gifts have been the subject of much scholarly interest in recent years, and central to this book are the material negotiators that mediated between courts, but the beauty of the gift can often obscure the tensions that led to its proffering. Ambassadorial records from the court of Naples are full of accounts of embassies, negotiations and gifts, written home by resident ambassadors to their respective courts, revealing that the city was a hub of diplomacy, where alliances were forged and frictions arose between states across the Mediterranean.