The statue is first mentioned as part of the collection of the French Cardinal Melchior de Polignac. From 1724 to 1731, the cardinal resided as ambassador of Louis XV at Rome. During this period he established a comprehensive collection of antiquities. He even conducted excavations himself in order to obtain sculptures, although many of the objects were purchased at the antiquities market in Rome. Therefore it is very likely that the statue was excavated in Rome or its surroundings and subsequently restored in a Roman sculptor’s workshop.

The cardinal transferred his collection to Paris, where it was exhibited in his residence since 1734. A collection inventory dated 1738 lists the statue as „enfant, tenant des osselets“. After Polignac’s death, Frederick II of Prussia acquired the entire collection of sculptures. The boy with astragals was displayed in the castle Charlottenburg until 1830, when it was moved to the newly inaugurated Royal Museum in Berlin, the present Altes Museum.

At that time the porcelain label was attached to the plinth, – its number 120 corresponds to the numbering system of the Berlin Museum’s first catalogue published in 1832. In 1922, the Berlin Museums sold the sculpture on the art market, from where it was bequeathed by Béla Fogarasi to the Szépművészeti Múzeum.

Around 1800 the first archaeologists began to study the statue. In an essay published in 1820 in Berlin, the scholar Konrad Levezow suggested that the statue did not represent a mortal child but instead the god Amor as infant. On the basis of literary sources, he assumed that the statue had originally been part of a group showing Ganymed and Amor playing with astragals.

The game of the divine boys is narrated by several ancient authors (in particular, The Argonautica of Apollonius of Rhodes). However, the interpretation of the boy with astragals as naughty little Amor who cheated his playing partner Ganymed was abandoned in the later 19th century as there are neither traces of wings nor other attributes that support the theory that the figure represents Amor. Similarly, there is no evidence for the assumption of a group consisting of two statues.

According to the Roman author Plinius, the famous Greek sculptor Polyclet is believed to have created a group of astragalizontes, i.e. boys with astragals, but they are likely to have been mortal boys. Apart from that, Polyclet’s group has not been preserved."

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