According to historical records preserved at the Basilica Santa Maria in Aracoeli, the image was carved from a single block of olive wood from the Garden of Gethsemane by a Franciscan friar assigned to the Holy Land in the fifteenth century.

Thereafter, Prince Alessandro Torlonia used a carriage that belonged to Pope Leo XIII to spend his Thursdays bringing the image on "house calls" to the sick unable to visit the Basilica.

[6] An image of Santo Bambino known as the Bambinello is also venerated in the Church of San Giovanni, Cori, Lazio, where it is under secured custody of the Salviati and Borghese clan.

Pious tradition in Cori maintains that in the 18th century, the Prefect of Pontifical Household, Cardinal Scipione Borghese, Archbishop of Teodosia, gave the original Santo Bambino of Aracoeli to the Church of San Giovanni in Giulianello in an effort to prevent the image from being stolen or desecrated by left-wing Jacobin militants.

Philip Langdon went to Santa Maria in Araceoli, but on his return he and the accompanying Franciscan were stopped at the Piazza Venezia by a cordon of soldiers who had blocked off the street while the Duce made a speech.

Despite being in a car with a cardinal's coat of arms they were not allowed to pass, until Langdon told them that he was bringing the Bambino to a dying man - at which point the soldiers snapped to attention and flagged them through.

It was customarily stored at night in a secured cabinet, but on 1 February 1994 at approximately 4:00 PM, two thieves masqueraded as workers on a scaffold erected in the monastery for renovations.

[citation needed] While the police believed it would be difficult to recover any of the gold and valuables taken with the image, they considered the Santo Bambino too well known to be easily marketed.

However, at midnight while the bells rang at Santa Maria in Araceoli, the statue miraculously returned to its rightful place, thus inspiring the famous urban legend tale of a Roman noblewoman pretending to be sick with the ulterior motive to take the image to her home.