He copied religious pictures for Pucci, (none survive), and apparently did a few pieces of his own for personal sale, of which Boy Peeling a Fruit would be the only known example.

As Caravaggio is said to have been painting only "flowers and fruit" for d'Arpino, this would again be a personal piece done for sale outside the workshop, but it was among the works seized from d'Alpino by Cardinal Scipione Borghese in 1607, together with two other early Caravaggios, the Young Sick Bacchus and the Boy with a Basket of Fruit.

Seen as a simple genre painting, it differs from most in that the boy is not 'rusticated,' that is, he is depicted as clean and well-dressed instead of as a 'cute' ragamuffin.

The model is thought to bear a resemblance to the angel in Caravaggio's Ecstasy of Saint Francis and to the boy dressed as Cupid on the far left in his Young Musicians, both about 1595 to 1597.

John T. Spike identified the likely original as a painting auctioned in London that year [full citation needed], although others have argued that either the Ishizuka version or that in the British Royal Collection could be the prototype.