An Italianate landscape with a view of Lake Garda and Salo in the distance, with figures on a bridge; and An Italianate landscape with a view of Lake Garda with a shepherd and shepherdess watering their flock at a river

Giovanni Battista Cimaroli trained first with Antonio Aureggio in Bologna and subsequently with the landscape painter Antonio Calza. That Cimaroli was an artist much in demand is illustrated by his collaboration in 1726 with Canaletto, Piazzetta, Pittoni and other artists on a series of allegorical tombs of British worthies commissioned by the 2nd Duke of Richmond, for which Cimarolie provided the landscape elements.

Cimaroli's idealised pastoral landscapes, of which this pair and those that feature as lot 168 in this sale are fine examples, are conceived in fluent brushwork and a light palette that is reminiscent of Zuccarelli. Such paintings helped to distinguish the artist and his work from both the topographical views of Canaletto and the more atmospheric pictures of Ricci.