A woman has denied at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court that she handled two paintings worth an estimated €2.6 million that were stolen from Russborough House in Co Wicklow in 2001.
Rosemary Quinn (48) St Aongus Park, Tallaght, pleaded not guilty to handling a Thomas Gainsborough painting entitled Madame Baccelli and a Bernardo Belotto painting entitled A View of Florence on June 26th, 2001.
Dominic McGinn, prosecuting, told the jury that the Garda investigation that immediately followed the theft did not reveal any obvious leads, but analysis of phone records led to the arrest of Ms Quinn on January 30th, 2002, at Whitehall Square, Whitehall Road West, Dublin 12.
Mr McGinn said it would be the prosecution's case that those involved in the theft contacted Ms Quinn on both her mobile and home phones. A subsequent forensic examination of her car found flakes of gold paint that were later found to match that on the frames of the stolen paintings.
He said that on June 26th, 2001, a Volkswagen Golf and a Jeep pulled up to the main entrance of Russborough House. Two men got out of the back of the Jeep and placed a wooden battering ram against the front door. They drove the Jeep up the stone steps and into the door, forcing it open. Two men went into the house and removed the paintings from their wall mountings. They then set the Jeep on fire before leaving the estate in the Volkswagen.
Andrew O'Conner, a former head of conservation at the National Gallery of Ireland, told Mr McGinn that both the Gainsborough and Belotto were important and valuable 18th-century paintings. He said the frames had been gilded with what was probably Italian gold leaf. He agreed he provided a sample of the gold leaf that would have been used to gardaí.
Mr O'Conner accepted a suggestion in cross-examination from defence counsel Niall Durnin that most paintings from the 18th century would have had frames coated in such gold leaf.
The trial continues.