Cardinal Fesch, by 1841 (inv. no. 1707);
His sale, Rome, Palais Ricci, 17-18 March 1845, lot 447;
E. Doumet, 1860;
Doumet-Adonsonl, sold, Paris, Hotel Drouot, 7-8 December 1923;
Anonymous sale, Monaco, Sotheby's, 17 June 1988, lot 894 (as Joseph Marie Vien);
There acquired.

H. Mireur, Dictionnaire des Ventes d'Art, vol. VII, Paris 1912, pp. 368-369;
T. Gaehtgens and J. Lugand, Joseph-Marie Vien, Paris 1988 p. 215, reproduced fig. 49 (as doubtful attribution to Vien);
N. Lesur and O. Aaron, Jean-Baptiste Marie Pierre 1714-1789: Premier peintre du roi, Paris 2009, pp. 205, 292, cat. no. P.211, reproduced in reverse. 

Montpellier, Salon de Montpellier, 1860, no. 374.

In De Factorum et Dictorum Memorabilium (Memorable Acts and Sayings of the Ancient Romans), the ancient historian Valerius Maximus tells of a certain Cimon, an aged man, who is in prison awaiting execution and who is therefore left without food.  His daughter Pero visits him and, upon seeing his deteriorating health, nourishes him by giving him her breast.  Of the many examples of filial piety in the literature of antiquity, this story is the most ubiquitous among artists' depictions throughout the 16^th and 17^th centuries in Italy and Northern Europe, though it is rarer in 18^th century France.