Byzantium's relations with the Latin west in this period have a 'Cheshire cat' character in comparison with ninth-century exchanges. Very little attention is paid to the Christian west by Byzantine writers even when Saxon potentates begin to intervene in Italy and bedeck themselves with imperial trimmings. In the late 950s Byzantines envisaged the reconquest of Crete as the prelude to victory in Sicily, while Otto I's intervention in Italy came in response to appeals from nearly every prominent figure, including John XII. The nature and extent of the impact of Theophanu on Ottonian court culture is controversial and ambivalent. The Byzantine late tenth- or early eleventh-century objets d'art still extant in German cathedral treasuries and museums probably arrived by a variety of routes, not merely from Theophanu's sumptuous dowry. Otto III tried to earn the appreciation of Rome's citizens through his promotion of the cult of the Virgin as protectress of Rome.