The present terracotta group shares many stylistic similarities with the work of Jérôme Duquesnoy the Younger, perhaps most notably with a marble pietà in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, signed QVESNOY, and attributed to Jérôme Duquesnoy in a work published by Marguerite Devigne in 1933, in which she dated it to the early years of Duquesnoy's return to Brussels from Italy.
Jérôme Duquesnoy the Younger (1602-1654) was born in Brussels, but little is known of his career until he returned to his native city from a sojourn in Italy in 1643. Like his elder brother, François, he is known to have trained in the workshop of his father, and may have worked in Spain and Portugal before moving to Florence, and later Rome, in 1640.