It is now in the Louvre Museum in Paris, as a typical representative of a type of image produced in considerable numbers in 16th-century Mechelen (Malines, modern Belgium) and exported all over the Catholic world.

In the mid-fifteenth century, workshops in Mechelen (Malines, in modern Belgium) began producing small statuettes of male and female saints,[2] and of the Infant Jesus, nude and standing on a socle.

Both the Infant Jesus of Mechelen and the Santo Niño de Cebú are of the same height at approximately 30 cm (12 inches) tall, while having similar characteristics such as the standing pose, naked body, hand blessing gesture and golden orbs.

Assuming that the camera shots are frontally accurate, the facial features are almost exactly identical with the following exceptions: The history of acquisition and ownership is unknown and unpublished by the Louvre or Parisian authorities.

In 2012, several pious American Traditionalist Catholics from Texas and New York petitioned the Louvre Endowment Fund that it purchase and release custody of the image, but this was denied.