Statue of James II, Trafalgar Square

The bronze statue standing on the west lawn of the National Gallery depicts King James II dressed as a Roman emperor. Completed in sixteen eighty-six, the figure wears traditional Roman armor and a laurel wreath upon his head. While long associated with the renowned sculptor Grinling Gibbons, contemporary records suggest the actual casting was the work of two Flemish sculptors, Peter van Dievoet and Laurens van der Meulen. The statue originally stood in the Pebble Court of Whitehall Palace, a position that became the subject of much public mockery after the king fled the country during the Glorious Revolution of sixteen eighty-eight. Critics of the time frequently remarked that the statue's orientation and the king's pose seemed to point toward the very river he used to escape into exile.