Link only available on sub pages

The almost flat lid of this agate bowl is decorated with what looks like a vision of pandemonium! Three little boys are running riot in the forest. One of them has fallen down, lost his drum and is apparently screaming because he’s being attacked by a dog. Another boy, half-naked, is trying to clamber onto the back of a goat, and a third boy – bearing the mask and characteristic staff of Dionysus – comes running onto the scene. It’s from this third child that the bowl probably derives its name: The Children’s Bacchanalia. Dionysus’ wild festivities were called bacchanalia.

The detail is quite amazing. Look at the tree stump! You can even see the rings of the tree.

Johann Melchior Dinglinger has formed the children‘s bodies out of the misshapen blister pearls that August the Strong so loved. He has combined the little figures in a complex scene and signed his name on the Herme, a Dionysian column, that has been knocked down – next to the goat.

As so often in Dinglinger’s work, we find here rich ornamentation combined with narrative elements, including an enamelled female bust, a hobby-horse, and a little boy with his pants falling down, who is just about to rob a nest.