The present pair of vases are reductions of the celebrated Classical vase currently in the Louvre, Paris. The frieze depicts ecstatic Bacchantes escorting a staggering Silenus.

The original, discovered with the Medici vase and other marbles in the wreck of a ship bound from Athens shortly after the time of Sulla, has been considered, since the late 19th century, to be a neo-Attic sculpture from an Athenian workshop.