The Mavisbank Estate - the monument to the Scottish Enlightenment

Abstract

The subject of the study is the changes that occurred in the architecture of Scottish country houses of the XVIII century under the influence of new worldview attitudes of the era of the Scottish Enlightenment. The object of the study is the Mavisbank estate in the county of Mildotian, owned by one of the leading figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, Sir Clark Penicuik. Mavisbank is considered as a significant monument of the era of the Scottish Enlightenment, because it shows how the changes taking place in society were expressed in the search for those architectural forms that would reflect the spirit of the new time – the time of reason and its accompanying rationality. When working on the article, the author used the methods of formal stylistic and comparative analysis, which made it possible to determine the architectural style of Mevisbank. The novelty of the research conducted by the author lies in the fact that at present time there are practically no fundamental works in Russian art criticism devoted to the study of the evolution of Scottish architecture of the era of the Scottish Enlightenment. The main conclusion of this study is that in the XVIII century, thanks to the activities of local educators, for the first time in Scottish architecture, there are primary architectural solutions that are ahead of similar trends in English architecture. Thus, the appearance of innovative architectural solutions on Scottish soil suggests that the Scottish architecture of the XVIII century ceases to be regarded as a purely provincial phenomenon based on English and continental models.