Stirling Heads

Internally, the Palace comprises two apartments, one each for the king and queen. Each has a hall, presence chamber, and bedchamber, with various small rooms known as closets. The Renaissance decoration continued inside, although little has survived the building's military use, excepting the carved stone fireplaces.

Inside the palace, the King’s presence chamber was richly decorated with 56 oak-carved heads, representing many of his courtiers, along with gods and heroes from Classical antiquity. Known as ‘The Stirling Heads’, and carved in the 1540s, they are perhaps the supreme example of renaissance iconography in Scotland. The courtiers are depicted in the style of classical gods at some sort of celestial court, and this reflects the Renaissance hankering for the cultural glories of classical Rome and Greece.  

38 of the original 56 heads survive today, and they would have fitted into an oak framework on the ceiling of the king's chamber- a fairly common feature in many palaces on the continent at the time.

Historic Scotland recreation of a lost Renaissance masterpiece has finally been completed. The ceiling in the Kings Inner Hall, in the royal palace of James V at Stirling Castle, was decorated with oak carvings showing the faces of kings, queens, Roman emperors and ancient heroes. Replicas of the "Stirling Heads" have been installed on the ceiling following the £12million  six year project.

Replicas as seen today on the ceiling of the King's Chamber

We enter the gallery

 These valuable heads have all the color removed and look quite plain, but do exhibit the color and the beautiful grain of the wood. 

They are displayed within tall cabinets and are a couple feet from the glass front.  I had great difficulty trying to photograph them .  I tried to get a picture of every face, but could not get a good angle on all of them.  I hope the few pictures that are clear and sharp give an insight into this set of great carvings. 

This panel would, as is the case of several others, not be placed on the ceiling

An example of an original and the work required to preserve and restore to original colors

Stirling heads 'conceal harp music'  

A series of marking found etched in the Stirling Heads, a set of carvings in one of Scotland's largest castles, may be 16th century harp music, according to academics.

The markings were discovered in the decorations adorned in the ceiling of Stirling Castle's Royal Palace. Believed to be the oldest written instrumental music in Scotland, experts said it would have been played in the castle's minstrel's gallery on harps, viols, fiddles and lutes.

Although not a traditional score, the markings would have given guidance to players, who then improvised in the same manner as modern jazz and blues musicians. The music was found by a woodcarver, John Donaldson, who was commissioned by Historic Scotland to create a series of replicas of the heads.  

Mr Donaldson found a sequence of '0's, 'I's and 'II's carved round the edge of head number 20, which bears the image of a woman's face. He contacted Barnaby Brown, a lecturer at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, who specializes in early Scottish music.

Mr. Brown recognised the similarity of the sequence to rare Welsh notations, which were previously thought to be the earliest markings of their kind in Britain. He said: "Very little notation survives from these dynasties of players because complex instrumental music was transmitted orally.

"These numerals provide an exciting opportunity to explore what instrumental music may have sounded like at Scotland's royal palace around 1540." He speculated that the piece could have been specially composed for James V.

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