View of the Brenta, near Dolo

Little is known of the career path of Venetian painter Giambattista Cimaroli, apart from a brief collaboration with Canaletto, Giovanni Battista Piazzetta, and Giovanni Battista Pittoni. Cimaroli provided valuable records of scenes in Venice, the Veneto, and the region of Verona. This splendid view of life on the Brenta near the town of Dolo, a short distance from Venice, is a case in point. We know that the large house in the center, here animated with resident life, was recently demolished.
When Robert Lehman bought this picture in 1955, it was ascribed to the better known Francesco Zuccarelli. But we recognize from other Cimaroli paintings his distinctive foliage and thickly impastoed, stiffly posed figures. The picture offers an affecting glimpse of eighteenth-century life as it played out amidst the heterogeneous architecture in the Veneto.