The boy holds a shell, cast from an actual specimen of a common Mediterranean mollusc, and probably intended to hold ink. Therefore, this is ostensibly a functional object, likely for a scholar’s desk. In the Renaissance goats were common Bacchic symbols representative of unbridled procreative instincts, and shells were often a symbol for female sexuality, associated with Venus. The textured surface of the goat’s body resembles the extensive hammering that features on most autograph bronzes by Riccio, the leading Paduan sculptor of his day. Scholars have long debated this attribution and raised suspicions that the work is a nineteenth-century pastiche. Indeed, some aspects (such as the modelling of the hair) do not seem characteristic of Riccio’s style.