A new sculpture of Romantic poet John Keats has been unveiled near his birthplace in Moorgate to mark the 229th anniversary of his birth.

The work of British artist Martin Jennings, the sculpture is a bronze cast of an enlarged life mask of Keats which was made when he was 21 (he died just four years later of consumption in 1821).

A plaster cast of the life mask is owned by Keats House, in Hampstead, and it was scanned and digitally enlarged as the basis for the sculpture which is mounted on a stone plinth. The plinth in turn is set in a circular slate base inscribed with some words from the Keat’s Ode on Idolence.

The new statue, which was unveiled last Thursday, was funded by former City of London Corporation Alderman, Bob Hall, who has donated it to the City of London Corporation. Hall has previously funded a statue of poet John Donne – the work of Nigel Boonham – which sits outside St Paul’s Cathedral.

Keats was son of an ostler at an inn and livery stable called The Swan and Hoop, which stood not far from the modern-day Moorgate station.