Giovanni Battista Crosato (Treviso c. 1697-1756 Venice)

This sketch for a ceiling decoration is characteristic of the light-filled, painterly style employed by Giovanni Battista Crosato in his finished canvases and frecoes. The reputation of the Venetian painter and stage designer has grown in recent times, following the reattribution to Crosato of his most important commission, the decoration of the ballroom in the Ca' Rezzonico, which had for years been wrongly attributed to Jacopo Guarana.