interesting thread!
My statue is that of "Jan Van Riebeeck" - (kind of our Christopher Columbus) who landed in Cape Town in 1652, and set up shop here.
We have a pair - of "jan and maria" statues in Cape Town.
however - while we believed for centuries this is what they looked like - ...............
The Statues were made after portraits - but the well known portraits of Jan and Maria van Riebeeck are in fact not the Van Riebeecks at all, but the Vermuyden-kettinghs. The face on the previous South African R10 note, too, was not Van Riebeeck’s but Vermuyden’s. No image of Maria van riebeeck exists. ‘Her’ statue in Cape Town in fact shows the wife of the chairman of the Dutch committee that helped to organise the 1952 Van Riebeeck festival in Cape Town. Quite funny me thinks
