Il coro della chiesa di Abate a Milano.

Il coro della chiesa di Abate a Milano (The Choir of the Church of the Abbé in Milan, 1879) is one of Segantini's earliest surviving works, painted when he was around seventeen years old and studying at the Brera Academy in Milan. The interior of a church — its architectural grandeur, its play of light from high windows onto carved wood and stone — was a challenging subject for a young painter, requiring mastery of perspective, tonal contrast, and architectural rendering. Segantini had enrolled at the Brera in 1875 under Guiseppe Bertini, and by 1879 he was developing the technical facility that would later be directed toward pastoral subjects. The Gallerie d'Italia in Milan — the Intesa Sanpaolo collection — holds this early work, which is rarely exhibited but important for understanding the arc of Segantini's development. Working from the early Realist tradition of Italian painting, the young Segantini here demonstrates skills he would later largely abandon in favour of outdoor divisionist work: the management of interior light, architectural precision, and the rendering of enclosed space. The subject also reflects the continuing importance of religious architecture as a training ground for young artists in nineteenth-century Milan.

The technique is academic and conventionally tonal — exactly what a Brera student would have been taught in the late 1870s. Perspective is carefully managed to convey the height and depth of the church interior. Chiaroscuro models the carved woodwork of the choir stalls and the stone surfaces of pillars and vaults.