Giovanni Battista Cimaroli

GIOVANNI BATTISTA CIMAROLI

Salò, near Brescia 1687 – 1771 Venice

Giovanni Battista 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. Lord Annandale bought a Winter landscape on oval panel by Cimaroli from Bologna in 1719 (Hopetoun House, Linlithgow). Probably in the second decade of the eighteenth century Cimaroli went to Venice, where he was in the guild from 1726 until at least 1732. Around 1726 he collaborated with Canaletto, Piazzetta, Pittoni and other artists on a series of Allegorical tombs of British worthies (all Whig party heroes) commissioned by the Irish art agent Owen McSwiney on behalf of the 2nd Duke of Richmond. Cimaroli provided the landscape elements, with sinuous, feathery trees. Four of his oval imaginary landscapes were sold by Consul Smith to George III and three remain in the Royal Collection at Buckingham Palace.

Cimaroli specialised in rustic landscapes with farms, villas and graceful figures in a light, bright palette, reminiscent of the work of Francesco Zuccarelli (1702-1788); capricci of ruins and views of towns in the Veneto, such as Dolo (Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart) and the Villa Negrelli at Strà (Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels), both on the Brenta canal. He also painted views of Venice, influenced by Canaletto. They are characterised by fluent brushwork, airy, luminous compositions and a lively figure groups which capture the complexity and picturesque qualities of Venetian society. The Swedish connoisseur Count Carl Gustav Tessin, writing in 1736, commented that Cimaroli was ‘gaté par les Anglais, qui lui ont imaginé que le plus petit de ces Tableaux vaut 30 sequins’ [1]. Several landscapes by Cimaroli were listed in the collection of Marshal Schulenburg, Commander-in-Chief of the Venetian armies and an important collector of Venetian paintings, in 1747. Cimaroli died in Venice in 1771.

The work of Giovanni Battista Cimaroli is represented in Palazzo Taverna, Rome; the Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart; the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels; the British Royal Collection and the Hunterian Collection, Glasgow.  

[1] Letter quoted by O Siren, Dessins et tableaux italiens de la Renaissance dans la collection de Suède, Stockholm 1902.