This vessel is one of the few pieces in the Dauphin’s Treasure to be preserved in its original state, and is a magnificent example of the delicate work of the goldsmiths of the Paris school. It is made up of a deep boat-shaped bowl with a frontal lip, whose edges thicken at the rear to form an inner fold with outlines of leaves or volutes. This body rests on a balustroid stem with helicoidal gadroons in relief, which stands in its turn on a circular foot with alabaster socle. These three pieces are held together by two gold mounts enamelled in black and red on a white background, simulating laurels with ribbons enamelled in translucent red. The handle and lip are delicate creations in enamelled gold representing respectively the figure of a siren and a figurehead of a faun or Silenus.

The handle is formed by a Horn of Abundance transformed into enamelled green leaves and white petals bound by red ribbons, from which there emerges a gold siren, harpy or bicha (half-woman, half-animal) enamelled in white, her eyes wide open like a mesmerist, with delicately fashioned bat’s wings. A blue sash crosses her breast, and her head is a carved agate, with the brown layer used for the hair and the whitish layer for the face. She has three enamelled feathers in her headdress, an idea found on other vessels, and particularly the Cup with gold mermaid at the Museo del Prado, O1. A pearl necklace conceals the joint at the neck. The head of the Prado siren is a typically Milanese production, possibly from the workshop of the Miseroni, and the work repeats Mannerist models linked to the French court, possibly, as Barbet thought, from the period of Henry IV. The bowl is decorated with a mount on the lip in the form of a figurehead of a faun, or possibly Silenus, in a style close to the Minerva ewer at the Louvre, MR 445. It has white and red enamelling with touches of black and other more specific colours, such as opaque grass green and purple, the latter often used by the Paris school. The rear is adorned with an appliqué of openwork scrolls with a fishscale pattern painted red and white.

The siren on the handle is very similar to vessel MR 120 at the Louvre, whose provenance is the French Royal Collection. Vessel MR 231, also at the Louvre, meanwhile has laurels at the joint like the one in Madrid, a very similar figurehead at the lip, and a half-woman, half-animal figure for a handle with special similarities in the treatment of the body, although it dates from the 1630s or later. Later still is a kind of tea urn in lapis lazuli at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, Kunstkammer, inv. 1653. This has a more schematised siren figure with the body twisted in the same way to form the handle. Also related is a model found in the Royal Collection of Sweden, vessel no. 39, which Kris believed to have been made in Prague in about 1660.

The state of the work in the 19th century can be seen through the photography of Juan Laurent y Minier, "Vase agate, montures d’or et émaux, XVIe siècle, règne de Henri II", c. 1879, Museo del Prado, HF0835/12 (L. Arbeteta, in press).