IF anyone ever wanted to quantify how many people had been lured to this country by the late David Lean's Ryan's Daughter, one name which could be added to the list is that of Italian born sculptor Donatella Ciaquini. Originally from Florence, Ms Cinquini whose first Irish exhibition opened in Carroll's Wyvern Gallery in last Tuesday first visited five years ago with her elder Doran. "We were walking to a in Dingle when we saw this and white picture of a little with a grandiose view," she explains.
A week later, she'd bought the house but it was only last year that she restored the property and moved in with her Swiss film maker band Daniel Richtman and their 11 year old daughter Michal family seems to have taken to life Kerry while young Ms Richtman is attending school locally, her father is planning to make a film here next year described by his wife as "a sort of The Young Man and the Sea". Meanwhile, their old home in "Israel has been neglected for the past couple of years. "I left there for just two or three months to supervise building, work here," says Ms Cinquini, who hasn't totally ignored her other properties in Zurich and Viareggio "and my cat and dog are still waiting for me to come back. We didn't intend to stay but I'm just's so enchanted by the people and the view."
Confirming her intention to spend plenty of time here in the future, in June she plans to start work on some apartments for students behind her
Kerry home, which is also to gain a couple of horse boxes and a large studio where she can work on future exhibitions. That should please her admirers, who turned out in considerable force last Tuesday.
Among those spotted in the gallery were a clutch of ambassadors (Israel's Zvi Gabbay, Canada's Barry Mawhinney and Switzerland's Willy Hold), together with Michael and Jacko Nesbitt and Edward and Barbara Gormley. Formerly a colonel in the American army and now a playwright, Mr Gormley who divides his time between Dublin and Pennsylvania appears to retain an interest in matters martial a play of his about Michael Collins was recently broadcast on RTE radio.