The article looks at the origins of kneeling tomb figures in the works of the brothers Hanequin and Egas Cueman, émigré sculptors from Brussels, Belgium who worked in Toledo and elsewhere in Spain. It discusses how these effigies might have functions and what might have inspired them. It also argues that in Spain the kneeling statue could have had a performative function, such as the case of the 1940s effigy of King Pedro I in Madrid.