This iconographic motif depicting the child Saint Nicholas with his nurse or mother was favored in monastic life contexts to remind the religious of the necessity of fasting and abstinence.
A very similar column statue, created around 1140 for the Abbey of Saint-Maur-des-Fossés (Val-de-Marne), is known.

Another image of this scene seems to have been made for the Collegiate Church of Notre-Dame-en-Vaux, as evidenced by another sculpted fragment featuring a veiled female head with the inscription (…)LAUS, probably referring to NICOLAUS.
