Renaissance Decorative Painting in Scotland (review)

Reviews 179 Parergon 21.2 (2004) to solidly lay the foundations of book history upon which broader explorations can be based – is indeed a regrettable occurrence. Rosa Salzberg Department of History University of Melbourne Bath, Michael, Renaissance Decorative Painting in Scotland, Edinburgh, National Museums of Scotland Publishing, 2003; paper; pp. x, 286; 250 colour and b/w illustrations; RRP £30; ISBN 1901663604. Michael Bath’s Renaissance Decorative Painting in Scotland is the first fulllength study of this rich topic since the publication of M.R. Apted’s The Painted Ceilings of Scotland 1550-1650 in 1966. Appearing at a time when the history and culture of Scotland during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is undergoing re-assessment, the book is of interest not only to art and architectural historians, but also to specialists in other disciplines, including the author’s own, Renaissance literary studies. Bath is aware of it. His first chapter, ‘ANational Style’, equates the older term ‘painted ceilings’ with ‘decorative paintings’, draws attention to the paintings’ milieu (a ‘period of intense religious iconoclasm’) and to the well-educated group (the nobility, gentry, royalty), who were their commissioners or designers. He notes painting locations (house walls, window embrasures, ceilings of various kinds); their media (chiefly tempera); the variety of buildings involved (palaces, town houses, funerary aisles); and, with perceptive attention to the Renaissance connection of imitation and invention, their major styles and subjects, highlighting the sources and analogues consulted for these works. (That topic of Scottish sources, especially those drawn from the emblem books of Alciato, Whitney, or Paradin, from the Scottish heraldic manuscripts, and from the grotesqueries of Vredeman and others, is expanded enlighteningly in Chapter Two, ‘Applied Emblematics’.) Bath warns of those examples ‘restored’ in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries where sense is obscured. In this first chapter Bath also provides a chronological overview, from earlier examples to those within the chosen period, with a brief examination of the ways in which this decorative Scottish painting is both exceptional and connected to Europe. The chronology is essential later, as frequent comparisons are drawn; it is a pity that a major error occurs in the reference to the paintings at Kinneil House, 180 Reviews Parergon 21.2 (2004) identified as the ‘earliest … belonging to the new tradition … which date from the 1650s’(p. 4). This is puzzling when earlier examples follow (Prestongrange, 1581; Delgaty Castle, 1592, 1593 and 1597), but the appended Inventory (pp. 215-75) corrects: Kinneil’s earliest decoration ‘dates from the 1550s’ (p. 272). In-depth studies follow. Chapter three examines George Bruce’s Palace at Culross, Fife, its chamber of emblems, ‘newly devised’ but based on those of Geffrey Whitney. Chapter four discusses paintings at Pinkie House, East Lothian, the suburban villa of the lawyer, Latin poet and royal officer of state, Alexander Seton, Earl of Fyvie and first Earl of Dunfermline. This fascinating essay focuses on the emblematic and trompe l’oeil decoration of the long gallery, but also looks forward to a full study of Seton. His portrait appears unprecedentedly in the emblem depicting moderation, which, like many of the seventeen others, is based on those of the Dutch artist, Otto Vaenius. Chapter five considers the classicallyderived grotesqueries or ‘antique work’ decorating Prestongrange, East Lothian, drawn from the engravings of Cornelis Bos, François Desprez and, chiefly, Hans Vredeman de Vries. Bath next examines examples of this same time with either a religious setting (including those at St Mary’s Church, Grandtully, near Perth, Skelmorlie Aisle, Largs, Ayrshire), or a religious theme (such as those at Provost Skene’s House, Aberdeen and ‘Mary Somerville’s House’, Burntisland), pointing out that some religious imagery remained acceptable throughout this period. Chapter seven studies the distinctive black and white heraldic and bestiary images of the long gallery of Earlshall Castle, Leuchars, Fife, home of the Bruce family. Bath’s comments on the relationship of this decorative imagery to that of Scottish heraldic manuscripts, which he calls ‘the closest analogues’, are illuminating, in part because there is so little written from a non-heraldist’s perspective. Yet in considering them as he does the emblem book sources, Bath betrays a lack...