HYLAND
visual as well as measured, and the restful restraint of
color of the Great Hall make it a kind of interior Elysium,
a realm of afterlife for mortals related to or chosen by
gods for their righteousness or heroism. And indeed,
there are just such heroes who from the beginning have
inhabited this room, with its aura of the sacred: four
antique statues—of Livia, a lady of the third century
AD, a Roman magistrate and
a Roman in a toga—stand
upon pale gray and white
pedestals designed by Adam
and executed by Joseph Rose.
At either end repose statues
of stately nobility. The bronze
Dying Gaul is by Valadier, a
copy of the original in the
Capitoline Museum, its bronze
cast in Rome and onyx color
achieved by immersion in water
for nine years. Opposite, in the
half rotunda, stands Apollo
Belvedere, copied by John
Cheere from the original in
the Vatican, Apollo triumphant
in his defense of the Temple
of Delphi. Antique classical busts—Socrates and
Marcus Aurelius among them—are juxtaposed with
contemporaries, the 1st Duke of Northumberland by
Van Nost and William Pitt the younger by Nollekens.
This conflation of latter day nobles with ancient heroes
reminds us of Renaissance iconography, like that seen
at Villa Farnese, ennobling the deeds of the owners