Self portrait of George Jamesone, 1642Rare example of pre-Reformation stained glass in the Magdalen Chapel, Edinburgh
Art in early modern Scotland includes all forms of artistic production within the modern borders of Scotland, between the adoption of the Renaissance in the early sixteenth century to the beginnings of the Enlightenment in the mid-eighteenth century.
Devotional art before the Reformation included books and images commissioned in the Netherlands. Before the Reformation in the mid-sixteenth century the interiors of Scottish churches were often elaborate and colourful, with sacrament houses and monumental effigies. Scotland's ecclesiastical art paid a heavy toll as a result of Reformation iconoclasm, with the almost total loss of medieval stained glass, religious sculpture and paintings.
In about 1500 the Scottish monarchy turned to the recording of royal likenesses in panel portraits. More impressive are the works or artists imported from the continent, particularly the Netherlands. The tradition of royal portrait painting in Scotland was probably disrupted by the minorities and regencies it underwent for much of the sixteenth century, but it flourished after the Reformation. James VI employed Flemish artists Arnold Bronckorst and Adrian Vanson, who have left behind a visual record of the king and major figures at the court. The first significant native artist was George Jamesone, who was succeeded by a series of portrait painters as the fashion moved down the social scale to lairds and burgesses.
The loss of ecclesiastical patronage that resulted from the Reformation created a crisis for native craftsmen and artists, who turned to secular patrons. One result of this was the flourishing of Scottish Renaissance painted ceilings and walls. Other forms of domestic decoration included tapestries and stone and wood carving. In the first half of the eighteenth century there was an increasing professionalisation and organisation of art. Large numbers of artists took the grand tour to Italy. The Academy of St. Luke was founded as a society for artists in 1729. It included among its members Allan Ramsay, who emerged as one of the most important British artists of the era.
Devotional art acquired from the Netherlands in the later fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries included the images of St Catherine and St John brought to Dunkeld; Hugo van Der Goes's altarpiece for the Trinity College Church in Edinburgh, commissioned by James III, and the work after which the Flemish Master of James IV of Scotland is named.[1] There are also a relatively large number of elaborate devotional books from the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, usually produced in the Netherlands and France for Scottish patrons. These include the prayer book commissioned by Robert Blackadder, Bishop of Glasgow, between 1484 and 1492[2] and the Flemish illustrated book of hours, known as the Hours of James IV of Scotland, given by James IV to Margaret Tudor after 1503 and described by D. H. Caldwell as "perhaps the finest medieval manuscript to have been commissioned for Scottish use".[3]
Before the Reformation in the mid-sixteenth century the interiors of Scottish churches were often elaborate and colourful. Particularly in the north-east of the country there were highly decorated sacrament houses, like the ones surviving at Kinkell from 1524 and Deskford from 1541.[4]Monumental effigies in churches were usually fully coloured and gilded and dedicated to members of the clergy, knights and their wives. In contrast to England, where the fashion for stone-carved monuments gave way to monumental brasses, in Scotland they continued to be produced until the end of the Medieval period.[5][6] These include the very elaborate Douglas tombs in the town of Douglas and the tomb built for Alexander McLeod (d. 1528) at Rodel in Harris.[4] Scotland's ecclesiastical art paid a heavy toll as a result of Reformation iconoclasm, with the almost total loss of medieval stained glass, religious sculpture and paintings.[7] The only significant surviving pre-Reformation stained glass in Scotland is a window of four roundels in the St. Magdalen Chapel of Cowgate, Edinburgh, completed in 1544.[8] Wood carving can be seen at King's College, Aberdeen and Dunblane Cathedral.[9] In the West Highlands, where there had been a hereditary caste of monumental sculptors, the uncertainty and loss of patronage caused by the rejection of monuments in the Reformation meant that they moved into another branches of the Gaelic learned orders or took up other occupations. The lack of transfer of carving skills is noticeable in the decline in quality when gravestones were next commissioned from the start of the seventeenth century.[10] According to N. Prior, the nature of the Scottish Reformation may have had wider effects, limiting the creation of a culture of public display and meaning that art was channelled into more austere forms of expression with an emphasis on private and domestic restraint.[11]
Around 1500, about the same time as in England, Scottish monarchs turned to the recording of royal likenesses in panel portraits, painted in oils on wood, perhaps as a form of political expression. In 1502 James IV paid for delivery of portraits of the Tudor household, probably by the "Inglishe payntour" named "Mynours," who stayed in Scotland to paint the king and his new bride Margaret Tudor the following year.[12] "Mynours" was Maynard Wewyck, a Flemish painter who usually worked for Henry VII in London.[13] As in England, the monarchy may have had model portraits of royalty used for copies and reproductions, but the versions of native royal portraits that survive are generally crude by continental standards.[1] Much more impressive are the works or artists imported from the continent, particularly the Netherlands, generally considered the centre of painting in the Northern Renaissance.[1] The products of these connections included a fine portrait of William Elphinstone.[2] It is one of the earliest representations of a Scottish subject to survive and was probably painted by a Scots artist using Flemish techniques.[14] The tradition of royal portrait painting in Scotland was disrupted by the minorities and regencies it underwent for much of the sixteenth century. In his majority James V was probably more concerned with architectural expressions of royal identity.[15] Mary Queen of Scots had been brought up in the French court, where she was drawn and painted by major European artists, but she did not commission any adult portraits, with the exception of the joint portrait with her second husband Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley. This may have reflected an historic Scottish pattern, where heraldic display or an elaborate tomb were considered more important than a portrait.[14]
Portraiture began to flourish after the Reformation.[15] There were anonymously painted portraits of important individuals, including miniatures of James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell and his wife Jean Gordon (1556).[15] Artists from the Low Countries remained important. Hans Eworth, who had been court painter to Mary I of England, painted a number of Scottish subjects in the 1560s.[14] He painted James Stewart, 1st Earl of Moray in 1561 and two years later he painted a joint portrait of the young Darnley and his brother Charles Stuart.[16]Lord Seton, Master of the Royal Household commissioned two portraits in the Netherlands in the 1570s, one of himself and one a family portrait.[7] A specific type of Scottish picture is the "vendetta portrait", designed to keep alive the memory of an atrocity. Examples include the Darlney memorial portrait, which shows the young James IV kneeling at his murdered father's tomb and the lifesize portrait of the corpse of The Bonnie Early of Moray vividly showing the wounds received by James Stewart, 2nd Earl of Moray when he was killed by George Gordon, 1st Marquess of Huntly in 1592.[17]
There was an attempt to produce a series of portraits of Scottish kings in panel portraits, probably for the royal entry of the fifteen-year-old James VI in 1579, which are Medieval in form. In James VI's personal reign, Renaissance forms of portraiture began to dominate.[15] He employed two Flemish artists, Arnold Bronckorst in the early 1580s and Adrian Vanson from around 1584 to 1602, who have left us a visual record of the king and major figures at the court.[14] However, the Union of Crowns in 1603 removed a major source of artistic patronage in Scotland as James VI and his court moved to London. The result has been seen as a shift "from crown to castle", as the nobility and local lairds became the major sources of patronage.[18]
By the seventeenth century the fashion for portraiture had spread down the social order to lairds such as Colin Campbell of Glenorchy and John Napier of Merchiston.[14] The first significant native artist was George Jamesone of Aberdeen (1589/90-1644), who, having trained in the Netherlands, became one of the most successful portrait painters of the reign of Charles I. He trained the Baroque artist John Michael Wright (1617–94), who painted both Scottish and English subjects.[7] The Flemish-Spanish painter John Baptist Medina (1659–1710) came to Scotland in 1693 and became the leading Scottish portrait painter of his generation.[19] Among his best known works are a group of about 30 oval bust-lengths, including a self-portrait, in Surgeons' Hall, Edinburgh. He trained his son, also John, and William Aikman (1682–1731), who became the leading portrait painter of the next generation.[20] Aikman migrated to London in 1723, and from this point until the late eighteenth century, most Scottish painters of note followed him.[21]
The loss of ecclesiastical patronage that resulted from the Reformation, created a crisis for native craftsmen and artists, who turned to secular patrons. One result of this was the flourishing of Scottish Renaissance painted ceilings and walls, with large numbers of private houses of burgesses, lairds and lords gaining often highly detailed and coloured patterns and scenes, of which over a hundred examples are known to have existed.[7] These were undertaken by unnamed Scottish artists using continental pattern books that often led to the incorporation of humanist moral and philosophical symbolism, with elements that call on heraldry, piety, classical myths and allegory.[7] The earliest surviving example is at the Hamilton palace of Kinneil, West Lothian, decorated in the 1550s for the then regent the James Hamilton, Earl of Arran.[22] Other examples include the ceiling at Prestongrange House, undertaken in 1581 for Mark Kerr, Commendator of Newbattle, and the long gallery at Pinkie House, painted for Alexander Seton, Earl of Dunfermline in 1621.[7]
Records also indicate that Scottish palaces were adorned by rich tapestries, like those that depicted scenes from the Iliad and Odyssey set up for James IV at Holyrood.[23] Some of this was undertaken by exclusive professional embroiders, but needlework was part of female education at all levels of society. Some of these tapestries were produced by noble ladies, such as the bed valances made by Katherine Ruthven for her marriage in 1551 to Campbell of Glenorchy. These are the oldest surviving examples of Scottish produced embroidery.[24] They display the couple's initials, arms and the story of Adam and Eve. A carpet designed to cover a table may be connected to the marriage of Katherine Oliphant, which has her initials, arms, biblical verses and (perhaps as a pun on her name) an elephant. Much of the needle work of the sixteenth century has been attributed, probably erroneously, to Mary, Queen of Scots. It is thought that she did contribute to the Oxburgh Hangings while imprisoned in England.[24]
Although tradition of stone and wood carving in churches largely ended at the Reformation, it continued in royal palaces, the great houses of the nobility and even the humbler homes of lairds and burgesses.[25] The intricate lid of the fourteenth-century Bute mazer, carved from a single piece of whale bone, was probably created in the early sixteenth century.[26] At Stirling Castle, stone carvings on the royal palace from the reign of James V are taken from German patterns,[27] and, like the surviving carved oak portrait roundels from the King's Presence Chamber, known as the Stirling Heads, they include contemporary, biblical and classical figures.[28] These, and the elaborate Renaissance fountain at Linlithgow Palace (c. 1538.), suggest that there was a workshop with an established connected with the court in the early sixteenth century.[9] James V and his successors employed a versatile French craftsman and wood carver, Andrew Mansioun, who settled in Edinburgh and trained apprentices.[29]
Some of the finest domestic wood carving is in the Beaton panels made for Arbroath Abbey[9] and at Huntly Castle, rebuilt for George Gordon, 1st Marquess of Huntly in the early seventeenth century, which focused on heraldic images. Their "popish" overtones led to them being damaged by an occupying Covenanter army in 1640.[30] From the seventeenth century, as domestic architecture for the nobility was increasingly for comfort, rather than fortification, there was elaborate use of carving in carved pediments, fireplaces, heraldic arms and classical motifs. Plasterwork also began to be used, often depicting flowers and cherubs.[31] Richly carved decoration on ordinary houses was common in the period. There is also the heraldic carving, such as the royal arms at Holyrood Palace, designed by the Dutch painter Jacob de Wet in 1677. The tradition of carving also survived in work like the carved stone panels in the garden of Edzell Castle (c. 1600), the now lost carving done for Edinburgh and Glasgow universities in the seventeenth-century and in the many elaborate sundials of the seventeenth century, like those at Newbattle.[9]
A capriccio by James Nories senior (1684–1757), credited with originating the tradition of landscape painting in ScotlandSelf portrait by Allan Ramsay
The growing importance of royal art can be seen in the post of Painter and Limner, created in 1702 for George Ogilvie. The duties included drawing pictures of the Monarch's person, his successors and members of the royal family, for the decoration of royal houses and palaces. However, from 1723 to 1823 the office was a sinecure held by members of the Abercrombie family, not necessarily connected with artistic ability.[32] Many painters of the early part of the eighteenth century remained largely artisans, like the members of the Norie family, James (1684–1757) and his sons, Robert and the younger James, who painted the houses of the peerage with Scottish landscapes that were capriccios or pastiches of Italian and Dutch landscapes.[33] They tutored artists and have been credited with the inception of the tradition of Scottish landscape painting that would come to fruition from the late eighteenth century.[34] Italy became an important point of reference for Scottish artists, with many taking the Grand Tour there to paint, sample the art and learn from Italian masters.[35]
In 1729 there was an attempt to found a school of painting in Edinburgh as the Academy of St. Luke, named after the Renaissance Accademia di San Luca in Rome. Its president was George Marshall, a painter of still lives and portraits, and its treasurer was the engraver Richard Cooper. Other members included Cooper's student Robert Strange, the two younger Nories, the portrait painters John Alexander (c. 1690-c. 1733) and Allan Ramsay (1713–84).[36] The success of the group was limited by its associations with Jacobitism, with Strange printing bank notes for the rebels.[37] Alexander was a great grandson of George Jamesone. He studied in London and Rome, returning to Edinburgh about 1720 where he painted the Baroque The Rape of Proserpine, for the roof of a staircase at Gordon Castle and numerous portraits.[21] Ramsay emerged as the most distinguished alumni of the academy. He studied in Sweden, London and Italy before basing himself in Edinburgh. There he established himself as a leading portrait painter to the Scottish nobility, before moving to London in 1757.[38] He made occasional return visits to Edinburgh to undertake commissions for the nobility and gentry.[21]
Notes
1 2 3 J. Wormald, Court, Kirk, and Community: Scotland, 1470–1625 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1991), ISBN0-7486-0276-3, pp.57–9.
1 2 B. Webster, Medieval Scotland: the Making of an Identity (St. Martin's Press, 1997), ISBN0-333-56761-7, pp.127–9.
↑ D. H. Caldwell, ed., Angels, Nobles and Unicorns: Art and Patronage in Medieval Scotland (Edinburgh: National Museum of Scotland, 1982), p. 84.
1 2 I. D. Whyte and K. A. Whyte, The Changing Scottish Landscape, 1500–1800 (London: Taylor & Francis, 1991), ISBN0-415-02992-9, p. 117.
↑ R. Brydall, The Monumental Effigies of Scotland: from the Thirteenth to the Fifteenth Century (Kessinger Publishing, 1895, rpt. 2010) ISBN1-169-23232-9.
↑ K. Stevenson, Chivalry and Knighthood in Scotland, 1424–1513 (Boydell Press, 2006), ISBN1-84383-192-9, pp.125–8.
1 2 3 4 5 6 A. Thomas, The Renaissance, in T. M. Devine and J. Wormald, The Oxford Handbook of Modern Scottish History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), ISBN0-19-162433-0, pp.198–9.
↑ T. W. West, Discovering Scottish Architecture (Botley: Osprey, 1985), ISBN0-85263-748-9, p. 55.
1 2 3 4 H. Scott, ed., Scotland: A Concise Cultural History (Mainstream, 1993), ISBN1-85158-581-8, p. 208.
↑ J. E. A. Dawson, Scotland Re-Formed, 1488–1587 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), ISBN0-7486-1455-9, p. 131.
↑ N. Prior, Museums and Modernity: Art Galleries and the Making of Modern Culture (Berg, 2002), ISBN1-85973-508-8, p. 102.
↑ R. Tittler, "Portrait, politics and society", in R. Tittler and N. Jones, eds, A Companion to Tudor Britain (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2008), ISBN1-4051-3740-1, p.449.
↑ M. Belozerskaya, Rethinking the Renaissance, Burgundian Arts Across Europe (Cambridge 2002), ISBN978-1-107-60544-2, p. 159: J. W. Clark, 'Notes on the tomb of Margaret Beaufort,' Proceedings Cambridge Antiquarian Society, 45 (1883), pp. 267–8.
1 2 3 4 5 J. E. A. Dawson, Scotland Re-Formed, 1488–1587 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), ISBN0-7486-1455-9, pp.55–6.
1 2 3 4 R. Tittler, "Portrait, politics and society", in R. Tittler and N. Jones, eds, A Companion to Tudor Britain (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2008), ISBN1-4051-3740-1, pp.455–6.
↑ E. K. Waterhouse, Painting in Britain: 1530 to 1790 (Yale University Press, 5th edn., 1994), ISBN0-300-05833-0, p. 32.
↑ E. K. Waterhouse, Painting in Britain: 1530 to 1790 (Yale University Press, 5th edn., 1994), ISBN0-300-05833-0, pp.48–9.
↑ J. Wormald, Court, Kirk, and Community: Scotland, 1470–1625 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1991), ISBN0-7486-0276-3, p.193.
↑ M. Lynch, ed., The Oxford Companion to Scottish History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), ISBN0-19-211696-7, p. 136.
↑ E. K. Waterhouse, Painting in Britain, 1530 to 1790 (London: Penguin, 4th Edn, 1978), pp.150–1.
1 2 3 E. K. Waterhouse, Painting in Britain: 1530 to 1790 (Yale University Press, 5th edn., 1994), ISBN0-300-05833-0, p. 330.
↑ J. E. A. Dawson, Scotland Re-Formed, 1488–1587 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), ISBN0-7486-1455-9, p. 290.
↑ M. Glendinning, R. MacInnes and A. MacKechnie, A History of Scottish Architecture: from the Renaissance to the Present Day (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1996), ISBN0-7486-0849-4, p. 14.
1 2 J. E. A. Dawson, Scotland Re-Formed, 1488–1587 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), ISBN0-7486-1455-9, p. 178.
↑ J. Warrack, Domestic Life in Scotland, 1488–1688: A Sketch of the Development of Furniture and Household Usage (1930, Forgotten books, reprint, 2012), pp.76–82.
↑ H. Fothringham, Scottish Gold and Silver Work (London: Pelican, 2nd edn., 1999), ISBN1-4556-1170-0, p. 54.
↑ Michael Pearce, 'A French Furniture Maker and the 'Courtly Style' in Sixteenth-Century Scotland', Regional Furniture, 32 (2018), pp. 129-30.
↑ M. Glendinning, R. MacInnes and A. MacKechnie, A History of Scottish Architecture: from the Renaissance to the Present Day (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1996), ISBN0-7486-0849-4, p. 46.
↑ T. W. West, Discovering Scottish Architecture (Botley: Osprey, 1985), ISBN0-85263-748-9, p. 68.
↑ The Laws of Scotland: Stair Memorial Encyclopaedia, vol. 7 "The Crown", para 847.
↑ I. Baudino, "Aesthetics and Mapping the British Identity in Painting", in A. Müller and I. Karremann, ed., Mediating Identities in Eighteenth-Century England: Public Negotiations, Literary Discourses, Topography (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2011), ISBN1-4094-2618-1, p. 153.
↑ E. K. Waterhouse, Painting in Britain, 1530 to 1790 (London: Penguin, 4th Edn, 1978), p. 293.
The culture of Scotland refers to the patterns of human activity and symbolism associated with Scotland and the Scottish people. The Scottish flag is blue with a white saltire, and represents the cross of Saint Andrew.
Scottish art is the body of visual art made in what is now Scotland, or about Scottish subjects, since prehistoric times. It forms a distinctive tradition within European art, but the political union with England has led its partial subsumation in British art.
Flemish Baroque painting was a style of painting in the Southern Netherlands during Spanish control in the 16th and 17th centuries. The period roughly begins when the Dutch Republic was split from the Habsburg Spain regions to the south with the Spanish recapturing of Antwerp in 1585 and goes until about 1700, when Spanish Habsburg authority ended with the death of King Charles II. Antwerp, home to the prominent artists Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony van Dyck, and Jacob Jordaens, was the artistic nexus, while other notable cities include Brussels and Ghent.
The artists of the Tudor court are the painters and limners engaged by the monarchs of England's Tudor dynasty and their courtiers between 1485 and 1603, from the reign of Henry VII to the death of Elizabeth I.
Scotland in the early modern period refers, for the purposes of this article, to Scotland between the death of James IV in 1513 and the end of the Jacobite risings in the mid-eighteenth century. It roughly corresponds to the early modern period in Europe, beginning with the Renaissance and Reformation and ending with the start of the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution.
The architecture of Scotland includes all human building within the modern borders of Scotland, from the Neolithic era to the present day. The earliest surviving houses go back around 9500 years, and the first villages 6000 years: Skara Brae on the Mainland of Orkney being the earliest preserved example in Europe. Crannogs, roundhouses, each built on an artificial island, date from the Bronze Age and stone buildings called Atlantic roundhouses and larger earthwork hill forts from the Iron Age. The arrival of the Romans from about 71 AD led to the creation of forts like that at Trimontium, and a continuous fortification between the Firth of Forth and the Firth of Clyde known as the Antonine Wall, built in the second century AD. Beyond Roman influence, there is evidence of wheelhouses and underground souterrains. After the departure of the Romans there were a series of nucleated hill forts, often utilising major geographical features, as at Dunadd and Dunbarton.
In the early Middle Ages, there were distinct material cultures evident in the different federations and kingdoms within what is now Scotland. Pictish art was the only uniquely Scottish medieval style; it can be seen in the extensive survival of carved stones, particularly in the north and east of the country, which hold a variety of recurring images and patterns. It can also be seen in elaborate metal work that largely survives in buried hoards. Irish-Scots art from the kingdom of Dál Riata suggests that it was one of the places, as a crossroads between cultures, where the Insular style developed.
The Renaissance in Scotland was a cultural, intellectual and artistic movement in Scotland, from the late fifteenth century to the beginning of the seventeenth century. It is associated with the pan-European Renaissance that is usually regarded as beginning in Italy in the late fourteenth century and reaching northern Europe as a Northern Renaissance in the fifteenth century. It involved an attempt to revive the principles of the classical era, including humanism, a spirit of scholarly enquiry, scepticism, and concepts of balance and proportion. Since the twentieth century, the uniqueness and unity of the Renaissance has been challenged by historians, but significant changes in Scotland can be seen to have taken place in education, intellectual life, literature, art, architecture, music, science and politics.
The architecture of Scotland in the Middle Ages includes all building within the modern borders of Scotland, between the departure of the Romans from Northern Britain in the early fifth century and the adoption of the Renaissance in the early sixteenth century, and includes vernacular, ecclesiastical, royal, aristocratic and military constructions. The first surviving houses in Scotland go back 9500 years. There is evidence of different forms of stone and wooden houses exist and earthwork hill forts from the Iron Age. The arrival of the Romans led to the abandonment of many of these forts. After the departure of the Romans in the fifth century, there is evidence of the building of a series of smaller "nucleated" constructions sometimes utilizing major geographical features, as at Dunadd and Dumbarton. In the following centuries new forms of construction emerged throughout Scotland that would come to define the landscape.
Architecture in early modern Scotland encompasses all building within the borders of the kingdom of Scotland, from the early sixteenth century to the mid-eighteenth century. The time period roughly corresponds to the early modern era in Europe, beginning with the Renaissance and Reformation and ending with the start of the Enlightenment and Industrialisation.
Church architecture in Scotland incorporates all church building within the modern borders of Scotland, from the earliest Christian structures in the sixth century until the present day. The early Christian churches for which there is evidence are basic masonry-built constructions on the west coast and islands. As Christianity spread, local churches tended to remain much simpler than their English counterparts. By the eighth century more sophisticated ashlar block-built buildings began to be constructed. From the eleventh century, there were larger and more ornate Romanesque buildings, as with Dunfermline Abbey and St Magnus Cathedral in Orkney. From the twelfth century the introduction of new monastic orders led to a boom in ecclesiastical building, often using English and Continental forms. From the thirteenth century elements of the European Gothic style began to appear in Scotland, culminating in buildings such as Glasgow Cathedral and the rebuilt Melrose Abbey. Renaissance influences can be seen in a move to a low-massive style that was probably influenced by contacts with Italy and the Netherlands.
Estate houses in Scotland or Scottish country houses, are large houses usually on landed estates in Scotland. They were built from the sixteenth century, after defensive castles began to be replaced by more comfortable residences for royalty, nobility and local lairds. The origins of Scottish estate houses are in aristocratic emulation of the extensive building and rebuilding of royal residences, beginning with Linlithgow, under the influence of Renaissance architecture. In the 1560s the unique Scottish style of the Scots baronial emerged, which combined features from medieval castles, tower houses, and peel towers with Renaissance plans, in houses designed primarily for residence rather than defence.
Music in early modern Scotland includes all forms of musical production in Scotland between the early sixteenth century and the mid-eighteenth century. In this period the court followed the European trend for instrumental accompaniment and playing. Scottish monarchs of the sixteenth century were patrons of religious and secular music, and some were accomplished musicians. In the sixteenth century the playing of a musical instrument and singing became an expected accomplishment of noble men and women. The departure of James VI to rule in London at the Union of Crowns in 1603, meant that the Chapel Royal, Stirling Castle largely fell into disrepair and the major source of patronage was removed from the country. Important composers of the early sixteenth century included Robert Carver and David Peebles. The Lutheranism of the early Reformation was sympathetic to the incorporation of Catholic musical traditions and vernacular songs into worship, exemplified by The Gude and Godlie Ballatis (1567). However, the Calvinism that came to dominate Scottish Protestantism led to the closure of song schools, disbanding of choirs, removal of organs and the destruction of music books and manuscripts. An emphasis was placed on the Psalms, resulting in the production of a series of Psalters and the creation of a tradition of unaccompanied singing.
Scottish art in the nineteenth century is the body of visual art made in Scotland, by Scots, or about Scottish subjects. This period saw the increasing professionalisation and organisation of art in Scotland. Major institutions founded in this period included the Institution for the Encouragement of the Fine Arts in Scotland, the Royal Scottish Academy of Art, the National Gallery of Scotland, the Scottish National Portrait Gallery and the Glasgow Institute. Art education in Edinburgh focused on the Trustees Drawing Academy of Edinburgh. Glasgow School of Art was founded in 1845 and Grays School of Art in Aberdeen in 1885.
Art in modern Scotland includes all aspects of the visual arts in the country since the beginning of the twentieth century. In the early twentieth century, the art scene was dominated by the work of the members of the Glasgow School known as the Four, led by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, who gained an international reputation for their combination of Celtic revival, Art and Crafts and Art Nouveau. They were followed by the Scottish Colourists and the Edinburgh School. There was a growing interest in forms of Modernism, with William Johnstone helping to develop the concept of a Scottish Renaissance. In the post-war period, major artists, including John Bellany and Alexander Moffat, pursued a strand of "Scottish realism". Moffat's influence can be seen in the work of the "new Glasgow Boys" from the late twentieth century. In the twenty-first century Scotland has continued to produce influential artists such as Douglas Gordon and Susan Philipsz.
Scottish art in the eighteenth century is the body of visual art made in Scotland, by Scots, or about Scottish subjects, in the eighteenth century. This period saw development of professionalisation, with art academies were established in Edinburgh and Glasgow. Art was increasingly influenced by Neoclassicism, the Enlightenment and towards the end of the century by Romanticism, with Italy becoming a major centre of Scottish art.
Portrait painting in Scotland includes all forms of painted portraiture in Scotland, from its beginnings in the early sixteenth century until the present day. The origins of the tradition of portrait painting in Scotland are in the Renaissance, particularly through contacts with the Netherlands. The first portrait of a named person that survives is that of Archbishop William Elphinstone, probably painted by a Scottish artist using Flemish techniques around 1505. Around the same period Scottish monarchs turned to the recording of royal likenesses in panel portraits, painted in oils on wood. The tradition of royal portrait painting in Scotland was probably disrupted by the minorities and regencies it underwent for much of the sixteenth century. It began to flourish after the Reformation, with paintings of royal figures and nobles by Netherlands artists Hans Eworth, Arnold Bronckorst and Adrian Vanson. A specific type of Scottish picture from this era was the "vendetta portrait", designed to keep alive the memory of an atrocity. The Union of Crowns in 1603 removed a major source of artistic patronage in Scotland as James VI and his court moved to London. The result has been seen as a shift "from crown to castle", as the nobility and local lairds became the major sources of patronage.
Landscape painting in Scotland includes all forms of painting of landscapes in Scotland since its origins in the sixteenth century to the present day. The earliest examples of Scottish landscape painting are in the tradition of Scottish house decoration that arose in the sixteenth century. Often said to be the earliest surviving painted landscape created in Scotland is a depiction by the Flemish artist Alexander Keirincx undertaken for Charles I.
The Royal Court of Scotland was the administrative, political and artistic centre of the Kingdom of Scotland. It emerged in the tenth century and continued until it ceased to function when James VI inherited the throne of England in 1603. For most of the medieval era, the king had no "capital" as such. The Pictish centre of Forteviot was the chief royal seat of the early Gaelic Kingdom of Alba that became the Kingdom of Scotland. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Scone was a centre for royal business. Edinburgh only began to emerge as the capital in the reign of James III but his successors undertook occasional royal progress to a part of the kingdom. Little is known about the structure of the Scottish royal court in the period before the reign of David I when it began to take on a distinctly feudal character, with the major offices of the Steward, Chamberlain, Constable, Marischal and Lord Chancellor. By the early modern era the court consisted of leading nobles, office holders, ambassadors and supplicants who surrounded the king or queen. The Chancellor was now effectively the first minister of the kingdom and from the mid-sixteenth century he was the leading figure of the Privy Council.
Sculpture in Scotland includes all visual arts operating in three dimensions in the borders of modern Scotland. Durable sculptural processes traditionally include carving and modelling, in stone, metal, clay, wood and other materials. In the modern era these were joined by assembly by welding, modelling, moulding and casting. Some installation art can also be considered to be sculpture. The earliest surviving sculptures from Scotland are standing stones and circles from around 3000 BCE. The oldest portable visual art are carved-stone petrospheres and the Westray Wife is the earliest representation of a human face found in Scotland. From the Bronze Age there are extensive examples of rock art, including cup and ring marks and elaborate carved stone battle-axes. By the early Iron Age Scotland had been penetrated by the wider European La Tène culture, and a few examples of decoration survive from Scotland. There are also decorated torcs, scabbards, armlets and war trumpets. The Romans began military expeditions into what is now Scotland from about 71 CE, leaving a direct sculptural legacy of distance slabs, altars and other sculptures.
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