The group was once thought to have been by the talented Florentine sculptor Pierino da Vinci (about 1529-1553), the nephew of Leonardo da Vinci, who died tragically young of a fever. According to the artist and biographer Giorgio Vasari, a marble group of putti with fish was carved by Pierino when working under Niccolo Tribolo on decorations for the gardens of the Medicean Villa at Castello, near Florence, which could potentially be related to this model, although this version displays only one fish. The stylistic treatment of the children is reminiscent of Pierino's lively bronze boys that decorate the perimeter of the basin of the Fountain of Hercules at Castello, three of which survive.

However, technical examination undertaken in 1985/6 indicates that the sculpture was created in the 19th century, based on the technique and surface treatment. Apparently thinly-cast and packed from behind with dense filling material, it was perhaps created from a plaster copy of a 16th-century original. Thermoluminescence testing of the sculpture, which enables the date of the last firing to be calculated, supports this proposal, although it transpired that the sculpture had been X-rayed prior to that sample being taken, which can affect the results. The surface has been overpainted with a terracotta-coloured paint, and the head of the figure on our right is made from a lighter and yellower clay. It differs stylistically from that on the left, and is likely to be a replacement. The heads do not fit comfortably, with plaster make-up on the necks, and photographic evidence shows that they were swapped sometime between the publication of Eric Maclagan and Margaret Longhurst's Catalogue of Italian Sculpture, published in 1932, and John Pope-Hennessy's catalogue, work on which was completed in 1960. Museum records provide no details, but it may be that an old break opened up and they were swapped in the belief that they had been wrongly positioned previously.