The Bologna-born Orientalist painter Alberto Fabbi (1858–1906) included stucco and glass windows in his oil painting Odalisques. He depicted a so-called ‘harem scene’, in which, a man on the right-hand side is welcomed by a group of women in a richly decorated interior: intarsia marble, lattices, and ceramic tiles are visible in the lower zone of the wall, while the upper section of the wall features murals with architectural views and multi-coloured stucco and glass windows with various forms of geometric ornament. There are two identical windows in the central recess and another shown in part to the left of it. Another geometric window in the left recess is depicted next to a mural painting with architectural motifs.

Alberto Fabbi’s younger brother, Fabio Fabbi (1861–1946), was also an Orientalist painter: he had turned away from sculpture and, after returning from a trip to Egypt in 1886, had become one of the most important Orientalist painters in Italy, with a studio in Florence in which he held a collection of Islamic architectural elements and artefacts (De Gubernatis, 1889, pp. 189–190, and Sinigaglia, 2021). In 1887, the Italian historian Guido Carocci, director of the Museo nazionale di San Marco in Florence and editor of the weekly magazine Arte e Storia (1851–1916), wrote that the two brothers had travelled to Egypt and described their Orientalist works as souvenirs: ‘I Fratelli Fabbi espongono diversi interessanti e graziosi ricordi di tipi e di costumi egiziani e arabi frutto del loro soggiorno nella terra dei Faraoni.’ (Carocci, 1887, p. 47). It is possible that for the house in his painting Odalisques Alberto Fabbi was inspired by Cairene interiors such as the ‘House of the Mufti’, which he may have visited during his sojourn in Egypt, with its murals and coloured stucco and glass windows (see https://vitrosearch.ch/buildings/2713627).