THE transformation is underway – after years of planning the painters have moved into the palace. We are now starting to glimpse how this beautiful building may have looked when it was home to Mary of Guise and her young daughter, Mary, Queen of Scots. Rich colours, made from many traditional materials, are being used to colour the ceilings in reds and greens. Exquisite trompe l'oeil designs are being created on the walls, fooling the eye into believing two-dimensional images are actually three-dimensional objects.

Just like in the mid-16th century, the work is being carried out by an international team. In this case we have Scots John Nevin and his son Mark, who has won gold medals in the decorating trade’s equivalent of the Olympics. They have been joined by Frenchman Michel Nadai, and two graduates from the school of decorative painting he runs in Agen, south-west France

            

Thanks to recent research we even have an idea of whose brushstrokes Michel may following in. Mary of Guise, whose husband James V commissioned the palace, may have employed a Frenchman called Pierre Quesnel for the job. Though the original papers are long lost, Pierre was recorded as part of Mary’s household in 1539 and 1542 and was involved with the decoration of Falkland Palace.

Pierre took to life in the country and married Scotswoman Madeleine Digby. The family’s history underlines the cosmopolitan lifestyle that certain people enjoyed in this period as their son Francois, born at Holyrood in Edinburgh, grew up to become a notable portrait painter, decorator and tapestry-designer in Paris. He even won patronage at court from Catherine de Medici, wife of Henry II, whose sons Francis, Charles and Henry became kings of France.