When the Portuguese sea captain and explorer of the Kingdom of Congo Duarte Pacheco Pareira (ca. 1460-1533) aimed at praising the high quality of local raffia fabrics, he chose to compare them with luxury textiles from Venice. He even claimed that the finesse of the Congolese material made from the fibres of palm trees rivalled that of Venetian velvets. His comparison was no coincidence. By the 16th century, the textile production on the Italian Peninsula had indeed become one of the most renowned in the Mediterranean and beyond. Production centres such as Venice, Genoa, and Florence flourished, and their names had become synonymous with the high quality textiles manufactured there. This paper seeks to examine the pre-history of this moment in time. It will trace the rise of the local silk production on the Italian Peninsula, particularly in the 13th and 14th centuries, when Italian weavers took inspiration from fabrics imported from regions as far as Central Asia and China. They responded creatively to the materiality, techniques, and ornamentation of these foreign textiles, both ‘copying’ and adapting as well as transforming them. During these formative years the textile production on the Italian Peninsula became increasingly part of a wider Mediterranean network, transgressing both media and geographical spaces. This study seeks to question and to investigate how during this development identities were shaped and defined through the textile medium in a context of cross-cultural dynamics and multi-layered processes of artistic transfer.