This plaster cast was made after the marble original of the Crouching Boy by Michelangelo from 1524. The crouching boy was intended to form part of the decoration of the Medici Chapel in the New Sacristy of the church of San Lorenzo in Florence. A drawing by Michelangelo in the British Museum (Wilde No.27r) shows two similar crouching figures above the entablature on the left of the tomb of Lorenzo de' Medici (the Magnificent) (1449-92). This design was never realised and the crouching boy remained unfinished in the Medici Collection, eventually passing to the Hermitage Collection in 1851. The cast was made in about 1884 by Elkington & Co in Birmingham or London.

The cast is displayed in one of the two magnificent Cast Courts at the V&A. Since they were first opened in 1873, these galleries have displayed reproductions of some of the most significant monuments of medieval and Renaissance Europe. In these galleries one can view plaster casts of sculptures from Renaissance Italy, notably some of the masterpieces produced by Donatello, Luca della Robbia and Michelangelo.
The sculptures are faithful copies of the originals. They were made in the 19th century, when the vogue for replicated works of art was at its height. Museum visitors at that time generally had little opportunity to travel abroad, and illustrated art books were costly. These superb casts could afford people a rare glimpse of the original sculptures, even if they could not visit Florence or Rome. Artists and designers then and now could likewise sketch and learn from them. The painted surfaces of these reproductions often mirror the original stone or bronze, and the casts seem convincingly monumental. But they are made of plaster, a relatively fragile material.