This project by the art collective Na Cailleacha, is part of their ongoing aim to increase visibility for women artists and to challenge patriarchy. They have taken a key work of European Renaissance art history, Raphael’s School of Athens (Vatican Museum 1509–1511), and recreated it to reflect a more inclusive world view. Raphael’s original fresco drew together the dominant influences on academia deriving from Ancient Greece and led by such male figures as Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras, Euclid and Archimedes. Na Cailleacha’s full-scale re-enactment of Raphael’s School of Athens with an all-women cast is set in the Museum Building of Trinity College Dublin. This image features forty-one contemporary Irish women from a variety of age profiles and backgrounds, all leaders in their fields, who have contributed to human knowledge.

Na Cailleacha is a collective of six visual artists: Helen Comerford, Barbara Freeman, Patricia Hurl, Rachel Parry, Therry Rudin, Gerda Teljeur; one jazz musician Carole Nelson and curator / writer Catherine Marshall who have come together to explore being female, older creatives.