ABSTRACT
The Senate House is aligned with the design for a triumphal bridge, in the left foreground, for which he won the Academy's Gold Medal in 1776, and this seminal project forms a secondary, more illusionary entrance to the cityscape and its representation of Sir John Soane's civic architecture. The architectural and iconographic development of Soane's Museum parallels the trajectory of his career. Architects and painters alike endeavour to express concrete notions of movement through space and time with abstract means. However, while the architect always yearns for more than pictorial representation can offer – for the tangibility of brick, stone, and timber – the painter revels in illusion. Soane's transformation of his residence into a national institution through pictorial means culminated a decade after the construction of the Picture Room and Monk's Suite, when he renovated the North Drawing Room on the first floor as a gallery space in 1835.
