After spending a lot of time solving this for myself I thought I'd share it. In my Craft 2 template I had this query:
{% set result = craft.entries({
section: 'events',
eventDate: ['and', '<' ~ now.w3c(), '> ' ~ now | date_modify('-6 days')],
results: ':notempty:',
order: 'eventDate desc',
with: ['imageGallery'],
limit: 3
}) %}