Featured What is this and how was it used?

The dome measures 8 inches (20.3 cm) diameter, weighs 7 pounds (3.2kg) and is made out of bronze and gilded. There are 4 figures 2 of each shown in photos they oppose each other. I also have another one that is the same but measures 7 3/4" in diameter, but the figures are different.
The green corrosion on the inside came from whatever it was attached to, 6 places equally spaced as seen in the photo.
Thank you for looking. Andy

 

Forgot to mention, they sound like a pleasant-sounding bell when struck.

 

maybe Silenus....or Bacchus .... wine bowl ??

 

Thanks, KOMO, I wasn't able to find the figure, that's an excellent match.

 

Yes, Bacchus on one side & a female follower, a bacchante, on the other. Each is flanked by a type of staff associated with the wine god's rites called a thyrsus. Not sure what those things garlanded below them are meant to be.

 

Thank you for the info Bronwen. I'm taking photos of the other bowl, I'll be posting them shortly.

 

more pine cones.....perhaps.

 

Here are photos of the second bowl.

 

Not to sound too much like Cream's "White Room," but Wow. Wow.


@hamptonauction - These are clearly old and far from perfect. Why don't you just send them to me, and I'll dispose of them for you. I'll send you some nice shiny new Corelle bowls to replace them.
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I'm torn between:

• Dried fish
• Chili peppers
• Christmas ornaments

 

That last image looks like she's working on her laptop

 

The first bowl looks more like the Green Man with pine cones, not Bacchus with grapes

 

I'm still thinking about this one. The birds I do not understand at all. The other figures are all playing musical instruments, stringed & percussion, & some are dancing as well, all consistent with the idea of a Bacchic revel. Many of them would be generically termed 'Pompeiian figures' for the dancing maenads on the walls of the buried cities.

 

The thyrsi have pine cone heads.

 

My preliminary assessment is that they ring false. Is the casting of the second one really so poor compared with the first? Or is it the photos? Are they stable when sitting? Is the interior of the second one oxidized in the same way?

 

It actually looks like Psyche working on a laptop, unless those bits that look like her characteristic squared off wings are really the end of her scarf. Believe it is another one of those weirdly squared off lyre/harp type instruments some of the others are playing.

 

Thank you, Bronwen. Yes, the quality of the second vessel is not as sharp as the first one. I took more pictures to answer your questions and yes they sit flat, the 1st one is more stable than the 2nd one which is a little wobbly.

 

@Bronwen - If this were Psyche, I'd agree that the object was a laptop computer; it's well-known that Cupid often cursed her addiction to Skyrim, although I believe that it might actually be Euterpe, playing a Phorminx:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phorminx




(Larger than a Threeminx, but smaller than a Fiveminx.)
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Your phorminx player meets the conventions for Sappho, here in a neoclassical (Gibson) version:



Euterpe's traditional instrument is the double flute or other woodwind. Thorvaldsen's version:


Being associated with Apollo, the Muses usually wear laurel wreaths, not the sakkos that binds the hair of Sappho, but if the phorminxist is a Muse, she would be Erato:



This is just stuff I know off the top of my head. Still pondering the second bowl. It looks like 2 different casts of characters of 3 each. The reveling bacchantes/maenads & some Persian looking men serenading birds, whom I do not recognize.