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Rubens painted vast altarpieces and hunts full of straining muscle, so a small, quiet study of a child is a rarity in his work. The boy was almost certainly someone from his own household, most likely his nephew Philipp or his eldest son Albert, caught not as a formal portrait but as a tender private study. Examination of the panel shows it grew in stages: first the small central boards carrying the child's head, then, years later, an added strip on the left with the hands and the little bird they hold. That expansion came sometime after 1625. It stayed a family picture rather than a commission, one of the few times Rubens turned his enormous skill on a single child at rest.