page_title: Scottish art
section_title: European Renaissance
hierarchical_section_title: Scottish art / History / European Renaissance
caption_attribution_description: English: One of the 16thC carved oak heads which adorned the ceiling of the King's Chamber in Stirling Castle.
context_page_description: 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.
  The earliest examples of art from what is now Scotland are highly decorated carved stone balls from the Neolithic period. From the Bronze Age there are examples of carvings, including the first representations of objects, and cup and ring marks. More extensive Scottish examples of patterned objects and gold work are found the Iron Age. Elaborately carved Pictish stones and impressive metalwork emerged in Scotland the early Middle Ages. The development of a common style of Insular art across Great Britain and Ireland influenced elaborate jewellery and illuminated manuscripts such as the Book of Kells. Only isolated examples survive of native artwork from the late Middle Ages and of works created or strongly influenced by artists of Flemish origin. The influence of the Renaissance can be seen in stone carving and painting from the fifteenth century.
context_section_description: Beginning in the fifteenth century, a number of works were produced in Scotland by artists imported from the continent, particularly the Netherlands, generally considered the centre of painting in the Northern Renaissance. The products of these connections included a fine portrait of William Elphinstone; the images of St Catherine and St John brought to Dunkeld; and 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. There are also a relatively large number of elaborate devotional books from the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, usually produced in the Low Countries and France for Scottish patrons, including the prayer book commissioned by Robert Blackadder, Bishop of Glasgow, between 1484 and 1492 and the Flemish illustrated book of hours, known as the Hours of James IV of Scotland, given by James IV to Margaret Tudor and described by D. H. Caldwell as "perhaps the finest medieval manuscript to have been commissioned for Scottish use". Records also indicate that Scottish palaces were adorned by rich tapestries, such as those that depicted scenes from the Iliad and Odyssey set up for James IV at Holyrood. Surviving stone and wood carvings, wall paintings and tapestries suggest the richness of sixteenth century royal art. At Stirling Castle, stone carvings on the royal palace from the reign of James V are taken from German patterns, 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. James V employed French craftsmen including the carver Andrew Mansioun.
caption: One of the Stirling Heads showing James V
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