This ceiling was painted in the late 1500s for Prestongrange House, the home of Mark Kerr, a nobleman with ties to the Reformation.
The Reformation was marked by the destruction of lavish Catholic customs and artworks, and yet, here was Kerr commissioning a ceiling filled with mischievous, nude creatures.
What you see above once delighted 16th-century audiences, but as Scottish tastes turned prim, the paintings were plastered over and forgotten.
When the paintings were rediscovered in 1962 during renovations, they were considered far too vulgar for modern eyes—more shocking, perhaps, now than they were then.
Now carefully conserved by the National Trust for Scotland, the panels hang here in Merchiston Tower: bold, bawdy, and still making trouble centuries later.
The Reformation was marked by the destruction of lavish Catholic customs and artworks, and yet, here was Kerr commissioning a ceiling filled with mischievous, nude creatures.
What you see above once delighted 16th-century audiences, but as Scottish tastes turned prim, the paintings were plastered over and forgotten.
When the paintings were rediscovered in 1962 during renovations, they were considered far too vulgar for modern eyes—more shocking, perhaps, now than they were then.
Now carefully conserved by the National Trust for Scotland, the panels hang here in Merchiston Tower: bold, bawdy, and still making trouble centuries later.