Oration (The Prayer)

Abbati showed this canvas in Florence in 1866, at the exhibition of the society that promoted living artists, and the Ministry of Public Instruction bought it off the wall. That purchase is how it entered the state collection, and it is one of the few sales he saw in his lifetime.

The woman kneeling in the church is Teresa Fabbrini, the wife of Diego Martelli, the critic who kept the Macchiaioli painters fed and housed at his farm on the coast; she wears the same heavy cloak in another portrait Abbati made of her. Light comes through an old window onto a tomb slab in the floor with flowers scattered on it. In the dark at the back, easy to miss, a bearded man in black stands watching her. The picture is about 57 by 42 centimetres, which is large for Abbati, who usually worked at the size of a book.