Upon arrival in the museum the piece was apparently wrongly identified, as '...a restoration by Benvenuto Cellini of an antique torso. The original in the Uffici in Florence'. Though the present group is clearly inspired by the Cellini 'Ganymede' (now in the Bargello, Florence) it is not a plaster cast of it as stated in the Inventory of Plaster Casts. It seems to be related to a lost ideal work by Thomas Campbell, although it is unclear whether it is a plaster cast after Campbell's Ganymede or a model for it.

Ganymede was a shepherd, the son of Tros. A legendary king of Troy. His outstanding beauty cause Jupiter to fall in love with him. After Ovid, Jupiter, having transformed himself into an eagle, carried Ganymede off to Olympus where he made him his cup-bearer. The myth found favour in ancient Greece because it appeared to sanction homosexual love. The medieval ‘Moralized Ovid’ made Ganymede a prefiguration of John the Evangelist, where the eagle represents Christ. Renaissance humanists turned the theme into an allegory of the progress of the human soul towards God.

Thomas Campbell (1790-1858) was born in Edinburgh. He was initially apprenticed to John Marshall, a marble cutter, and later James Dalzell, to whom the business passed on the death of Marshall. He later studied at the Royal Academy in London and instructed by Joseph Nolleken. During this period he also worked in the studio of Edward Hodges Baily. In 1818 he went to Rome, where he set up his own studio. He returned to England in late 1829 or early 1830 and opened a studio in Leicester Square, London, while keeping his studio in Rome, where he would travel to buy his marble. He is buried in Kensal Green Cemetery in north London.