In a new light

For Sir John Soane, the tools of the trade included skylights, tinted glasses and mirrors, as much as classical motifs, bricks and mortar. Carla Passino retraces the life of the man who chased the poetry of architecture and left an extraordinary gift to the nation

- Carla Passino

APOLLO 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 When he was given the statue in 1811-a plaster cast of the Hellenistic Apollo Belvedere originally made for the Apollo of the Arts, Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington-Soane not only knocked down part of his house's wall to bring it in, but also fitted above it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 flanking it with smaller statuettes portraying Raphael and Michelangelo.

This display, in Soane's Dome Room, marked the glittering triumph of a self-made man who had had an unlikely start in life. Born the fourth son of a Berkshire bricklayer, John Soan, he would have probably followed his father into the trade, but a lucky introduction to the assistant of architect George Dance changed his destiny. In 1768, Soane (who added a final letter to his surname to gentrify it) entered Dance's household and office, later moving to Henry Holland's. His skill and dogged determination did the rest. Having won a gold medal for the design of a bridge a project he credited with saving his own life, as it forced him to miss a boat trip in which his friend James King drowned -he secured a travelling scholarship to visit Italy, leaving on March, 18, 1778 (a date he would commemorate for the rest of his life).