Little is known about the Italian Orientalist painter Alberto Fabbi. His contemporary, the American portrait painter Washington Bogart Cooper (1802–1888) lauded one of Fabbi’s works in Godey’s Magazine as a 'gem', and added that Fabbi was: 'an artist with great qualities and possibilities in him, but scarcely known in this country. Certainly, his paintings are rarely seen here, and very little can be found about him' (Cooper, 1895, p. 142). In his Dizionario degli artisti italiani viventi, pittori, scultori e architetti of 1889, the Turin born writer, philologist and Orientalist Angelo de Gubernatis (1840–1913) noted that Fabbi had completed a course in painting at the Accademia di Belli Arti (‘Academy of Fine Arts’) in Bologna, and then moved to Florence, where he stayed for some time, before moving to Alexandria, where he was then resident and where he was devoting himself to portraits. The first works of this artist were Orientalist subjects, almost all of which he executed in Florence (de Gubernatis, 1889, p. 189). His younger brother, Fabio Fabbi (1861–1946), was also an Orientalist painter and had a studio in Florence richly furnished with Islamic architectural elements and artefacts (de Gubernatis, 1889, pp. 189–190).

Cooper, W. B. (1895). "Private picture galleries in the United States". In: The Godey’s Magazine 1895, pp. 129–144.

De Gubernatis, A. (1889). Dizionario degli artisti italiani viventi, pittori, scultori e architetti, Firenze: Coi tipi dei successori le Monnier.