Giovanni Battista Cimaroli

With Frost and Reed, London, by April 1961;

Fortnum and Mason Collection, London;

By whom sold ('Property from the Fortnum and Mason Collection'), London, Bonhams, 6 December 2006, lot 46 (as attributed to Giovanni Battista Cimaroli), for £218,400;

Where acquired by a private collector;

Thence by descent;

Until sold, London, Bonhams, 5 December 2012, lot 66 (as Giovanni Battista Cimaroli);

Acquired subsequently by the present owner.

Advertisement, in The Connoisseur, vol. CXLVII, no. 593, May 1961, p. IX (as Luca Carlevarijs);

F. Spadotto, Giovanni Battista Cimaroli: catalogo ragionato dei dipinti, Rovigo 2011, p. 220, no. 70, reproduced p. 221 (as Giovanni Battista Cimaroli).

As Dott.ssa Federica Spadotto pointed out in her 2011 monograph on the artist (see Literature), this luminous and animated painting demonstrates Cimaroli's indebtedness to the forerunner of eighteenth-century Venetian vedutismo: Luca Carlevarijs (1663–1730). Indeed, a comparable view by Carlevarijs datable c. 1709, which likewise features a cast of energetic Venetians bustling through the Piazza, is today in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.¹ This shared interest in the depiction of daily life, however, did not prevent Cimaroli from developing his own style, which was characterised by dry and sharp brushwork and a particular approach to the rendering of light.

A comparable painting by Cimaroli, of larger dimensions, is in the Terruzzi Collection, Bordighera.²

¹ Object no. 1975.1.89; oil on canvas, 50.5 x 120 cm.

² Spadotto 2011, p. 222, no. 71, reproduced in black and white p. 223, reproduced in colour pp. 50–51, pl. XII.