ABSTRACT
This paper explores the impact which the Reformation had on viewers' relationships with painted ceilings, and the spaces which they ceiled, in Aberdeen and its surrounding area. The principal sites are at St Machar's Cathedral, Crathes Castle and at Provost Skene's House. Analysis of these three examples shows that the Reformation prompted a desire in Scottish viewers to transcend space. It is suggested that the ceiling of pre-Reformation St Machar's relegated its viewers, excluding all but the elite from its coded message; that the ceiling of post-Reformation Crathes Castle elevated the minds, yet relegated the bodies, of its educated Humanist audience; and that the ceiling at Provost Skene's House, which once presided over a clandestine rosary chapel, spiritually elevated Aberdeen's recusant Catholic community from their testing existence in early post-Reformation Scotland.
