The flat oval stone is engraved with a nude satyr dancing ecstatically over an overturned crater. The satyr is nude, balancing on his left tiptoes, his other leg swung back, his torso twisting, and his head thrown back and turned nearly frontally. In one hand he holds a beribboned thyrus, in the other, a kantharos, with a panther skin draped over his arm, its tail extending behind, below the satyr’s own tail. The crater, on the groundline, is embellished with clusters of grapes. The stone is mounted in a swivel ring in a 19th century gold setting.
The subject was popular on Roman gems (see for example nos. 178-180 in G.M.A. Richter, Engraved Gems of the Romans) and marble reliefs. The prototype must have been a Hellenistic bronze statue not previously known until the discovery in 1997-1998 of the life-sized bronze figure by Sicilian fishermen, now in Mazara del Vallo. The pose on this gem is exactly that of the bronze satyr. The date of the bronze is still debated, with suggestions ranging from the late 4th to the mid 1st centuries B.C. (see no. 19 in J. Daehner and K. Lapatin, Power and Pathos, Bronze Sculpture of the Hellenistic World).