Orientalist painting of a wedding procession by Fabio Fabbi

This large, impressive oil painting is by the Italian artist Fabio Fabbi. Fabbi was born in Bologna in 1861. He met success early in his career, moving to Florence to study in the Academia in the 1870s and becoming a professor there in 1883. The following year, 1884, saw him admitted to the Academia in his native Bologna. Throughout his career, Fabbi was renowned for his Orientalist paintings, particularly his depictions of North African and Middle Eastern scenes of busy streets. He enjoyed the patronage of important contemporaries, such as King Umberto I, the second king of the recently unified Italy, which indicates the degree of success achieved during his lifetime. Fabbi lived a long life, not dying until 1946.

This painting depicts a wedding procession in Cairo. The procession moves through a narrow street, which fades into obscurity in the left background as the haze of heat and kicked up sand diminishes our view. Onlookers to the left watch as the wedding procession marches towards us, the viewer. The parade is led by men playing musical instruments, such as flutes and drums, as well as a camel laden with drapery and cargo. Behind the music makers, the bride, wearing a beautifully painted lilac dress, walks atop flower petals and beneath a brilliant red canopy. Her presence causes white doves, symbols of purity, to rise into the air.

Fabbi produces an excellent, painterly picture, his expressive brushstrokes lending texture a work that is noisy and boisterous. The painting is signed lower left ‘F Fabbi.’