The Bank of England appears as a fantastic ruin.This is not an image of decay, however, but a triumphant depiction in the form of a cut-away perspective of the greatest architectural commission awarded in late Georgian London. John Soane became architect to the Bank in 1788 and from 1798 it became the task of the painter Joseph Gandy to memorialise and glorify the result – culminating with this visionary rendering in 1830.