background images in atahualpa

I am trying to change the background image from a solid color to an uploaded image. I’ve uploaded a .gif to my /wp-content/themes/atahualpa/images directory (where there are lots of other pre-existing images). And then in the bodystyle dialogue I entered the following:

font-family: tahoma, arial, sans-serif;
font-size: 0.8em;
color: #000000;
background: url (/wp-content/themes/atahualpa/images/myimage.gif);

(my directory is atahualpa, not atahualpa3, as I’ve seen in some other cases. I don’t know about that issue, but I don’t think it is relevant here).

No image shows up. All I get is white screen. And even if I try to use a different image in the directory, I still get nothing, so I don’t think it’s an issue with the image that I uploaded (no spaces,caps,it’s a .gif).

I thought bodystyle was the correct dialogue for this. Have I done something wrong?
Thanks in advance all,

Dan