POLLO gleams, bathed in golden light. The glow that sets him apart from the hieratic Egyptian gods, debauched Roman revellers and fragments of mosaics that encrust nearly every surface of the Sir John Soane’s Museum doesn’t come from his divine nature. Instead, it is testament to the Georgian architect’s genius. When he was given the statue in 1811—a plaster cast of the Hellenistic Apollo Belvedere originally made for the Apollo of the Arts, Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington—Soane not only knocked down part of his house’s wall to bring it in, but also fitted above it two skylights set with yellow and amber glass to suffuse the sculpture with golden light. Across the room from his resplendent god, he would later place his own bust, sculpted by Sir Francis Chantrey in the style of a mighty Roman emperor, modestly
