page_title: Sculpture in Scotland
section_title: Seventeenth century
hierarchical_section_title: Sculpture in Scotland / Early modern era / Seventeenth century
caption_attribution_description: English: Figures representing 'Justice' and 'Mercy' by Alexander Mylne (1637) which formerly stood above the main entrance to Parliament House..
context_page_description: 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.
context_section_description: 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. 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. Elaborate carving was used at Huntly Castle, rebuilt for George Gordon, 1st Marquess of Huntly (1562–1636) in the early seventeenth century, in wooden panels that focused on heraldic images. Their "popish" overtones led to them being damaged by an occupying Covenanter army in 1640. The tradition of carving also survived in work such as the carved stone panels in the garden of Edzell Castle (c. 1600), where there are depictions of seven Cardinal Virtues, the seven Liberal Arts and the seven Planetary Deities; the now lost carving done for Edinburgh and Glasgow universities and in the many elaborate sundials of the seventeenth century, such as those at Newbattle Abbey.
  Many grand tombs for Scottish nobles were situated in Westminster Abbey, rather than in Scottish churches. Exceptions include the two tombs designed by the Flemish-born Maximilian Colt (d. post 1641), the leading sculptor at the English Jacobean court, for George Home, 1st Earl of Dunbar in Dunbar parish church (c. 1611) and David Murray, 1st Viscount of Stormont in the Palace Chapel at Scone (c. 1618). Both have a kneeling figure derived from Tudor iconography. From the late part of the century there is the monument to the murdered James Sharp (1618–79), Archbishop of St. Andrews, in Holy Trinity Church, St. Andrews. Probably carved in the Netherlands, the grandiose tomb shows the Archbishop in prayer above a carved tableaux of his martyrdom, flanked by Corinthian columns. There are also the baroque tombs to James Douglas, 2nd Duke of Queensberry at Durisdeer, Dumfriesshire, and the William Douglas, 3rd Duke of Hamilton in St. Bride's Bothwell, Lanarkshire (both designed c. 1695), which are as grand as any contemporaneous monument in England.
  Members of the Mylne family dominated royal building and masonry in Scotland in the first half of the seventeenth century. John Mylne (c. 1589–1657) completed a statue of James VI begun by Benjamin Lambert after the latter's death in 1616 and his most famous work was the sundial in Holyrood (1633). Alexander Mylne (d. 1643) was primarily a sculptor and in 1635 executed the royal arms over the entrance of Parliament House and two years later the two figures of Justice and Mercy on the same building.
  As in England, in the late seventeenth century sculpture was dominated by foreign professionals. Dutch-born Grinling Gibbons (1648–1721) supplied four large lead statues to Glamis Castle and in 1701 he supplied seven chimney pieces to Dalkeith House, including one in red and white marble bearing the story of Neptune and Galatea. The equestrian statue of Charles II outside Parliament House (1684/5) was a lead replica of Gibbon's bronze statue at Windsor, the first in Britain to depict a monarch in classical dress. John Van Ost (fl. 1680–1729) supplied lead garden statuary for Hopetoun House and Drumlanrig Castle. Sir William Bruce (c. 1630–1710), the leading Scottish architect of the seventeenth century, favoured Dutch carvers for his realisation of Kinross House in Fife, where there are festoons, trophies and cornucopia around the doorways and gates. This may have included Jan van Sant Voort, a Dutch carver known to have been living in Leith, who supplied Bruce with a carved heraldic overdoor in 1679 and who worked on Bruce's rebuilding of Holyrood Palace. From 1674 the London plasterers George Funsterfield (fl. 1660–76) and John Houlbert (fl. 1674–79) worked for Bruce at Thirlestane, Berwickshire and at Holyroodhouse. Dunsterfield was also active at Balcaskie, Fife and probably at Kellie Castle, Fife.
caption: Justice and Mercy, carved by Alexander Mylne for Parliament House
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