Collection Highlights

Some of the Most Significant Pieces in the State Apartments

A Variety of Decorative Art

Among the highlights of the collection are the three vast canvas paintings on the ceiling of St Patrick’s Hall by the Italian artist Vincenzo Waldré. Together they form the most important painted ceiling to survive in Ireland from the eighteenth century. A series of seven mythological paintings by Gaetano Gandolfi are among the foremost cycles of eighteenth-century Italian paintings on display anywhere in Ireland.

The collection is also notable for its formal and official portraits. It includes a seventeenth-century portrait by the internationally renowned Flemish painter Sir Anthony Van Dyck. It also features portraits of British monarchs and their consorts from King George II to Queen Victoria and a unique series of twenty portraits of Irish Viceroys. Eighteenth-century French furniture and clocks, fine Georgian and Victorian Irish furniture, rococo plasterwork ceilings, neoclassical statuary, Waterford crystal chandeliers and Irish State china are just some of the many other highlights to be enjoyed.