Photographic copy of drawing from Vitruvius Scoticus showing main front of Drumlanrig Castle

Description Photographic copy of drawing from Vitruvius Scoticus showing main front of Drumlanrig Castle

Catalogue Number SC 767388

Category On-line Digital Images

Copy of DFD 58/6 P

Scope and Content Early 18th-century Illustration of Entrance Front, Drumlanrig Castle, Dumfries & Galloway This magnificent entrance front gives Drumlanrig its theatrical glamour. The rectangular towers at each outer corner are carried one storey higher than one-bayed, three-storeyed links which provide a step down each side to a five-bayed Classical centrepiece. The centrepiece has two storeys of pedimented windows framed by giant Corinthian pilasters, and a central projecting entrance porch which rises to a clock-tower topped by a ducal coronet. The entrance is on a balustraded terrace above an arcaded and pilastered basement, and is approached by a double horseshoe-shaped staircase. At the corner towers, the terrace breaks forward with flat-roofed pavilions, their inner walls enclosing a courtyard, and their north fronts decorated with niches filled with lead statues representing the Four Seasons. Figures of gladiators stand on the terrace above. Drumlanrig was built on a grand scale. The general model was George Heriot's Hospital (now School) in Edinburgh which had been begun in 1628, and which was not fully completed when work started at Drumlanrig. But much of the detail seems to have been modified in the course of construction under the influence of the new royal palace of Holyrood in Edinburgh, from where the ducally coroneted cupola over the entrance seems to have been borrowed (at Holyrood it is a crowned cupola). Drumlanrig Castle, one of the great Renaissance courtyard houses of Scottish domestic architecture, was built between 1679 and 1690 for William Douglas, 1st Duke of Queensberry. The architect was almost certainly James Smith who had worked on the construction of Holyrood Palace, Edinburgh, and the Master of Works (builder) was William Lukup. Source: RCAHMS contribution to SCRAN.

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/collection/767388

File Format (TIF) Tagged Image File Format bitmap