Open 10:30–5:00, Tuesday – Saturday
Patronage and Power: Who Commissioned the Drogheda Paintings by Gabrielle Ricciardelli
Friday 26th June at 11.30am
An illustrated lecture presented by Brendan Matthews.
As Highlanes Gallery marks the twentieth anniversary of its opening; this moment offers an ideal opportunity to reconsider two remarkable mid-eighteenth-century views of Drogheda attributed to the Italian painter Gabriele Ricciardelli.
For generations, these paintings have occupied a quiet yet significant place within the town’s cultural inheritance—familiar to many, but seldom examined in depth. Yet there is one fundamental question that has remained largely unexplored:
Who commissioned them—and why?
Community Historian Brendan Matthews delves into this question, and through undertaking extensive research of these paintings origins, identifies and reconstructs the dense web of kinship that linked several of the most powerful families of the period.
Places are priced at €6 (ex booking fee) with tea, coffee and biscuits served on arrival.
