Scottish renaissance painted ceilings are decorated ceilings in Scottish houses and castles built between 1540 and 1640. This is a distinctive national style, though there is common ground with similar work elsewhere, especially in France, Spain and Scandinavia.See Palau de l'Almirall Valencia, Spain and later examples at Saint Cornely Church, Carnac Brittany and Peter und Paul Kirche Köngen. An example in England, at Wickham, Hampshire, was recorded in 1974.Victor Chinnery, Oak Furniture (Antique Collector's Club, 1979), p. 36, pictured: Elizabeth Lewis, 'A jettied house at Wickham', in Proceedings of the Hampshire Field Club, no.36 (1979/1980), pp. 203-215: associated wall-painting is exposed in Wickham Wine Bar, the ceiling is now concealed, SMR no.MWC4723. There are records of over 100 examples, and a much smaller number of painted ceilings survive in-situ today. Some salvaged painted beams and boards are stored by Historic Environment Scotland. The paintings at Crathes Castle, dating from 1597 and 1602 are probably the best known.
Imported timber
Most surviving examples are painted simply on the boards and joists forming the floor of the room above. Rooms or galleries in attic storeys were fully lined with thin pine boarding and painted. Oak and pine timber was imported from Denmark–Norway, Sweden, and further afield and known as "Eastland" timber. The fashion was superseded by decorative plasterwork and sometimes the painted ceilings were broken up to form lathing for the new plaster.Anne Crone, in Michael Bath, Anne Crone, Michael Pearce, The Dendrochronology and Art History of 16th and 17th century Painted Ceilings (Historic Environment Scotland, 2017), pp. 9, 33
The house of the lawyer Sir Thomas Hope of Craighall, before it was demolished to build the public library in Edinburgh, had a large hall with a painted ceiling concealed above a moulded plasterwork ceiling, and the painted work could be seen by taking up the floorboards in the room above. The painted ceiling at Huntingtower Castle was hidden in the same manner until it was revealed by the Office of Works in 1912.Alison Hay Dunlop, Anent Old Edinburgh (Edinburgh, 1890), pp. 11-12.
Paint and painters
Technical research shows that the paint used protein size made from waste kid leather or parchment called "skrowis", with chalk and pigments, including red and yellow natural ochres, red vermilion, blue azurite, and orpiment often mixed with indigo to form vibrant greens.Michael Pearce, 'Paint' in Moses Jenkins, Building Scotland (John Donald, Edinburgh, 2010), pp. 92-3, 96, 99. Brighter and more expensive pigments were needed for coats of arms. Pigment names used in 16th- and 17th-century Scotland can be found in the royal treasurer's accounts and the accounts of the masters of works, and in a small number of painter's wills in the National Records of Scotland. This information was collected by Michael R. Apted and Susan Hannabuss and published by the Scottish Record Society in 1978.Michael R. Apted and Susan Hannabuss, Painters in Scotland, 1301–1700: A Biographical Dictionary (Edinburgh: SRS & Edina, 1978), pp. 8–10, 131-151.
Some painters used a varnish made of pine resin and walnut oil on selected areas and colours of decoration.Karen Dundas, 'Scottish Renaissance Painted Decoration', Wooden Heritage Conservation: Bilboa (Icomos, 2020), pp. 180-1: Karen Dundas, SAIR, 102 (2023), p. 43: Michael Pearce, 'Painted Decoration, Making and Context', Jennifer Melville, Gladstone's Land (Edinburgh: National Trust for Scotland, 2018), p. 264. In England, a painter Leonard Fryer made an equivalent use of "sweet varnish" to enhance imitation wood graining at Oatlands Palace.Ian C. Bristow, Architectural Colour in British Interiors, 1615-1840 (Yale, 1996), pp. 2, 11. The designs seem to have been painted freehand, excepting only motifs on ceiling boards at Riddle's Court which seemed to have been traced, perhaps by "pouncing" patterns.Karen Dundas, 'Painted ceilings: their significance on the Royal Mile and wider context', Michael Cressey, 'Riddle's Court, Lawnmarket, Edinburgh: a merchant's house fit for a king, Scottish Archaeological Internet Reports, 102 (2023), p. 45
The names of many painters have been found in contemporary records, but as yet no painter of any particular surviving ceiling has been identified through archival research. However, something is known of the painter craft in Edinburgh. In 1552 James Watson painted images of saints in his booth or workshop for the altarpiece of the Hammermen in St Giles, and painted and varnished the shields of the altar.John Smith, The Hammermen of Edinburgh and their altar in St. Giles church (Edinburgh, 1906), pp. 151–153. In 1554, Edinburgh painters led by Walter Binning assaulted an outsider, David Warkman, who had been painting a ceiling.Extracts from the records of the Burgh of Edinburgh 1528–1557, pp. 194-5. Painters and glaziers were linked in craft organisations in Scottish burghs, although the Scottish painters do not seem to have made and painted stained glass in this period.Michael R. Apted and Susan Hannabuss, Painters in Scotland, 1301–1700: A Biographical Dictionary (Edinburgh: SRS & Edina, 1978), pp. 4, 28, 105.
Walter Binning painted the new north gallery of Holyrood Palace in 1577.Charles Thorpe McInnes, Accounts of the Treasurer: 1574-1580, vol. 13 (Edinburgh, 1978), pp. 162, 166. Some of the Workman or Warkman family were settled at Burntisland in Fife the 1590s.Michael Apted, 'Mary Somerville's House', in PSAS (1974), p. 228.Michael Apted, "Two painted ceilings from Mary Somerville's House, Burntisland, Fife", PSAS, vol. 91 (1957–58), p. 171. The Skelmorlie Aisle at Largs was signed by John Stalker, and initials "IM" painted at Delgatie Castle may be those of the painter John Mellin or Melville.Ailsa Murray, eConservation Magazine, 10 (2009). It appears that only the wealthiest of the merchant classes and aristocrats could afford this decoration, though the picture is unbalanced as more modest interiors do not survive.
The plastered walls or timber linings of the rooms were also painted, but this decoration has not usually survived. At the merchant's house in Law's Close, Kirkcaldy, a ship painted above a fireplace may represent the Angel of Kirkcaldy which was part of the fleet that brought James VI and Anne Denmark home in May 1590, or the James of Kirkcaldy, a ship part-owned by the Law family.Marguerite Wood, Extracts from the Records of the Burgh of Edinburgh, 1589-1603 (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1927), pp. 17, 330. At Riddle's Court in Edinburgh, painted decoration on plaster survived between the ends of the beams, and painted walls survive at Gladstone's Land.Karen Dundas, 'Painted ceilings: their significance on the Royal Mile and wider context', Michael Cressey, 'Riddle's Court, Lawnmarket, Edinburgh: a merchant's house fit for a king, Scottish Archaeological Internet Reports, 102 (2023), p. 43.
Types of patterns
The largest group of these ceilings have patterns of fruit and flowers, and may perhaps have evoked tapestry borders and include religious iconography.Michael Pearce, 'Painted Decoration, Making and Context', Jennifer Melville, Gladstone's Land (Edinburgh: National Trust for Scotland, 2018), pp. 260-3. Some ceilings in galleries at the top of buildings incorporated vignettes with biblical or emblematic scenes. Others employ Renaissance grotesque ornament including symbolic emblems. A gallery in a demolished building on Edinburgh's Castlehill had scenes of the Apocalypse and Christ asleep in a storm, set in the Firth of Forth, with a backdrop of the Edinburgh Royal Mile skyline viewed from Fife.Wilson (1891), 194-201 Fragments survive in storage at the National Museums of Scotland.Bath (2003), 239-241 Ceilings painted with rows of heraldic shields included; the gallery at Earlshall Castle and Collairnie Castle, Fife, a ceiling at Linlithgow High Street,Cook (1868), 409-13. and Nunraw House, East Lothian. Some 17th-century schemes included the signs of the zodiac. The summer house or banqueting room at Gowrie House, known at the Monk's Tower was updated with symbols from the zodiac and the heraldry of George Hay, 1st Earl of Kinnoull.Robert Forsyth, Beauties of Scotland, vol. 4 (Edinburgh, 1806), p. 281.
Several surviving examples can be seen in Edinburgh; including John Knox's House, Gladstone's Land, and the Canongate Tolbooth museum. The birthroom at Edinburgh Castle was painted by James Anderson to commemorate the fiftieth birthday of James VI, and restored by Walter Melville in 1693.Moses Jenkins (ed.), Building Scotland (John Donald, 2010), 95. Gladstone's Land, with a ceiling included a painted date of "1620", also has relatively well-preserved decoration on plaster contemporary with the ceilings. More extensive domestic mural painting survives at Kinneil House, dating from the 1550s, and painted for the Regent Arran, who employed Walter Binning on some of his projects.J. S. Richardson, 'Mural Decorations at Kinneil', PSAS, 75 (1941), 184-204. Aberdour Castle, Fife, has one of latest ceilings c.1633, and Huntingtower Castle the earliest c.1540. Ceilings at Crathes Castle are decorated with the Nine Worthies and the Muses. As at Crathes, beams at Traquair House and Sailor's Walk, Kirkcaldy, carry proverbial and biblical admonitions, written in Middle Scots. A gallery at Provost Skene's House, Aberdeen, is similar in format to the Castlehill painting,Meldrum, (1958/9) St. Mary's, Grandtully, and the Skelmorlie Aisle at Largs, two examples in churches, are painted on the thin lining boards of wooden barrel vaults. Culross Palace, built by Sir George Bruce of Carnock, has a variety of painted interiors including suites of emblems, geometric patterns and biblical scenes.Andrew Jervise (1854)
Other ceilings remain in private buildings, and a number of ceilings were salvaged and stored by Historic Scotland including two from Dysart, Fife. The National Museum of Scotland displays a ceiling from Rossend Castle, Burntisland, Fife,Apted (1971/2): Thomson (1975) and a screen from Wester Livilands, near Stirling.Ross (1898/9) Stirling Smith Museum and Art Gallery has a ceiling from Robert Drummond of Carnock's house. A room from Alexander Seton, 1st Earl of Dunfermline's Pinkie House is displayed at the Museum of Edinburgh. Painted beams from Midhope Castle were moved to Abbey Strand, Edinburgh, and a ceiling from Prestongrange House is at Merchiston Tower, though these last two are not regularly open to the public. Two rooms in the G&V Hotel in Edinburgh still have painted ceilings from the original early seventeenth century tenement building on the Lawnmarket.A. Crone & D. Sproat, 'Revealing the History, timber framed building at No 302 Lawnmarket Edinburgh' in Journal of Architectural Heritage Society of Scotland, 22 (EUP, 2012) pp. 19-36
Painted ceilings concealed by later plasterwork continue to be discovered or rediscovered. Fragments of a ceiling made for George Keith, 5th Earl Marischal survive at Keith Marischal. A ceiling with grotesques and scrollwork "of exceptional quality" was found at Moubray House on Edinburgh's Royal Mile in 1999. After restoration the whole building was pledged as a gift to Historic Scotland by an American benefactor in 2012.Bath (2003), p. 245: Scotsman Newspaper, Lifestyle, 24 August 2012 Another ceiling on Edinburgh's Royal Mile was discovered in 2010 in Clement Cor's house in Advocate's Close. A part of the ceiling was varnished with pine resin. The joints in the floorboards had been sealed with paper tape.Shân Ross, Michael Bath, Anne Crone, Michael Pearce, The Dendrochronology and Art History of 16th and 17th century Painted Ceilings (Historic Environment Scotland, 2017), pp. 14, 19-20.
Sources of the designs