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Only the left foot is supposed to lack some small detail of stitching, leading to a legend that Nollekens committed suicide when the mistake was pointed out to him. The legend is untrue: Nollekens, a founder member of the Royal Academy and sculptor to George III as well as to several major political figures, survived Rockingham by 41 years.
One possible cause for the curious story is the engraved legend at the base of the statue underneath its left foot: "Nollekens Ft." This is actually an abbreviated form of the Latin "Nollekens Fecit", meaning "Made by Nollekens" but as the usual modern abbreviation for 'fecit' is 'fec.' or 'fe.', and as 'Ft' is often the abbreviation for 'foot' - but usually for the English measure (304.8 mm) -, it could easily be misunderstood, either unintentionally or in jest, as referring to an acknowledgement by Nollekens of some error on the statue's foot.
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