Giovanni Battista Cimaroli

Private collection, France

F. Spadotto, Giovan Battista Cimaroli, Rovigo 2011, pp. 252-3, cat. nos.87 and 87a, both reproduced.

The following condition report has been provided by Simon Parkes of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc. 502 East 74th St. New York, NY 212-734-3920, simonparkes@msn.com, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This pair of painting is in beautiful condition. Neither canvas is lined; they are both well stretched and the paint layers are stable. There are no noticeable structural issues. Both paint layers are clean and varnished, and the retouches are accurately applied and are not numerous. There is very slight thinness in some of the details in the masonry and in the rigging of the ships, but it has not been retouched. The condition overall of both paintings is excellent.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

The vast majority of Cimaroli's paintings depict or are inspired by the landscape in and around the Venetian mainland and relatively few (Spadatto lists but twenty-three) depict Venice itself, this despite his first moving there in the second decade of the 18^th century and dying there some fifty years hence. Many of his topographical views of Venice have, it is true, been long concealed under misattributions to Canaletto and his school and more and more will undoubtedly be correctly reassigned to this surprisingly versatile painter in due course.

Cimaroli was born in 1687 at Salò on Lake Garda, not far from Brescia. He began his artistic training with Antonio Aureggio and then studied in Bologna with the landscape painter Antonio Calza. He specialised in rustic landscapes with farms, villas and graceful figures rendered in a light, bright palette, reminiscent of the work of Francesco Zuccarelli (1702-1788). Four such imaginary landscapes (all oval) were sold by Consul Smith to George III and three remain in the Royal Collection at Buckingham Palace.¹

He collaborated with Canaletto on several projects in the 1720s; around 1726 they joined forces on the Allegorical Tombs of British worthies commissioned by Owen McSwiney on behalf of the 2^nd Duke of Richmond and, as first recognized by Frances Watson in his 1953 article in the Burlington Magazine entitled "G.B. Cimaroli: A Collaborator with Canaletto," on the View of Piazza San Marco with a Bull Fight.² It is therefore unsurprising that Canaletto's Venetian vedute became Cimaroli's chief source of inspiration for his own. Here, the former depicts a view treated on several occasions by Canaletto, although it retains much of Cimaroli's own characteristic way of painting. It looks west, from the Piazzetta past Sansovino's masterpiece, the Biblioteca, described by Palladio as the most beautiful building since antiquity, past the Zecca (or "Mint") with its rusticated Doric decorative scheme and up towards the Dogana ("Customs house") and Santa Maria della Salute, built by Baldassare Longhena from 1631-87 in thanks for the Virgin's deliverance of the city from the plague of 1630. This he effectively repeats in a larger canvas now in the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco.³ The latter looks south, also from the Piazzetta, across the Bacino to San Giorgio Maggiore, Palladio's own masterpiece, and another of his churches, the Zitelle (farthest left). Immediately in front of us Cimaroli strives to depict the varied populace of Venice for his Grand Tour clients: Dalmatian merchants, Turks, fine ladies in Carnival masks, lawyers, senators and fishermen.

1.  Spadatto, under Literature, reproduces three of them; pp. 104-07, nos. 14, 14a, 14b.
2.  Ibid., pp. 248-9, no. 85. For Watson's article see The Burlington Magazine, June 1953, XCV, pp. 205-07.
3. Spadatto, op. cit., p. 250, no. 86a, reproduced p. 251.