Boring content not about Covid

Once, maybe twice, a year we get to eat off our Spode fancy schmancy dinnerware.  The ones with this pattern:

I must admit, I like how the busyness of the design encourages much staring and trying to work out what is going in the scene.

I'll crop for you:

We seem to have cows in the water, to the consternation of a man and woman (I think) on the shore.  But what's going with the figure on the right, sitting on a box, and behind what exactly?

Maybe a priest? Or woman?  Sitting behind what looks like a fake rock face, like what they would build for a film.  Or is it something my brain just hadn't made sense of yet?

In fact, a lot of the design looks a bit Escher-esque, no?  Like this:

I'm not sure all of those angles make sense.  And now that I think of it, it's perhaps a tad Dali-esque too. 

Anyway, maybe everyone else knows about this pattern, as it's more famous than I knew:

The Blue Italian design was launched by Josiah Spode II in 1816, and this decorative vignette provided the perfect showcase for his father’s revolutionary blue underglaze transfer printing process. It depicts a classic Italianate landscape – although the origins of the scene remain a mystery, as no single place in Italy seems to match the various elements.

And Country Life magazine explains what's going on:

And so it was that, when Blue Italian was launched in 1816, it couldn’t have met with a more eager audience. Its Imari Oriental border of exotic flowers and scrolls gave a nod to the industry’s history, but within dwelt a fairytale as pretty as a picture. The scene is the Italian countryside: a shepherd and his lady tend their flock by a river that meanders lazily past a picturesque ruin, two lovers hold hands on the riverbank and, beyond, the river curves dotingly around a tiny chapel towards a medieval castle on high.

Trees and flowers permeate the landscape, both earth and sky, as if Man and his soft-edged edifices are there merely by Nature’s benevolent wish, and clouds scud overhead, reminding us that blue and white come in so many beautiful hues.

The "lovers holding hands on the riverbank" certainly don't get much prominence. 

The details of the design seem obscure enough that you could probably make a stupid Da Vinci Code style story out of it - it's a map to a hidden treasure somewhere in Italy, with the involvement of the Church (I'm going with the figure sitting on the mystery box being an Italian-ate priest.)

You can thank me later, Hollywood.