"Old painting" with strange story is copy after Jacob Jordaens

Rops, from Belgium, sells on 7 March 2016 an "Old painting", oil on canvas, no description (update: even worse, now described as "Jeu de Boules" or Bowls Game!), estimated at 1,500 to 2,000 Euro.

It isn't well painted, but the iconography, the story, was intriguing, and the composition was remarkable as well, with the frontal view of the action.

Searching for it first led me the story of Atalanta and Melanion, where Melanion threw golden apples to the ground; because Atalanta stopped to pick them up, Melanion could win the race. The prize for Melanion (or Hippomenes) was marriage to Atalanta. All's well that ends well, except that this is Greek mythology, so they end up getting transformed into animals and forced to carry out some task into eternity.

Now knowing the story (although even now I don't know what the caged children are doing there in the painting), I found the original of this work quite easily: a Jacob Jordaens from 1646, sold at Sotheby's in 1986 (found at the RKD).

As a rather poor copy, it will struggle to get near the bottom estimate. UPDATE: sold for 1,700 Euro, slightly more than I expected.

Oh, and the children in cages: perhaps they were some ingenious 17th century system to prevent children-spectators from being crushed at busy festivities? Just guessing.