Patronage and Power: Who commissioned Gabriele Ricciardelli

Join Community Historian, Brendan Matthews, as he delves into the who & why of two of the oldest collection works.
About this Event

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