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
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. 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 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".