It belongs to his early period and forms part of a set of works on the same subject, which also includes The Hurdy-Gurdy Player.

[2] The first mention of the painting dates from 3 February 1791 when Joseph Delorge, painter and director of the Bergues drawing school, was commissioned to write the Etats et Notices des Monuments et Peinture, sculpture and engraving from the furniture of the Abbey of Saint-Winoc in Bergues.

Kept for a time in the abbey library, it was transferred, with the entire deposit, to the former Jesuit college in the city between 3 December 1792 and 5 January 1793.

In the handwritten list that he established on the occasion of the transfer, the painting, under number 12, is presented as a "blind man playing the hurdy-gurdy, led by his dog", and attributed to "Michelangelo" – meaning Caravaggio.

In the Catalogue of paintings exhibited in the gallery of the museum of Bergues written by the painter and restorer Pierre-Antoine Verlinde (1801–1877), the Beggar playing the hurdy-gurdy, under number 97, is attributed to José de Ribera.

Noticed in 1925 by Pierre Landry, who was the first to bring it closer to the works of the master then in full rediscovery, the painting was chosen by Charles Sterling to appear in an exhibition of "painters of reality" that opened in November 1934 at the l'Orangerie of the Tuileries, but still cautiously attributed to the "workshop of Georges de La Tour".

At the end of the operation, which lasted fourteen months and was graciously donated by Pierre Landry, the painting was exhibited for some time, from June 1936, in the new acquisitions room of the Musée du Louvre.