Sir Godfrey Kneller saw and painted the infant prince before the royal family fled to France in December 1688.  This likeness was then used as a basis for numerous miniatures and prints by other artists.

Kneller was not a Jacobite, but he dismissed the rumours that James was a ‘supposititious’ child, that is, a substitute for a still-born baby, supposedly smuggled into the queen’s bed in a warming pan.  Kneller said that the king and queen had sat to him for their portraits on over thirty occasions, and he therefore knew ‘every line and bit in their faces.  I say the child is so like them both that there is not a feature in his face but what belongs to father or mother.’