Casa Guidi

The home of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning in Florence, Italy. After EBB was disinherited by her father upon her marriage to Browning, the couple moved to Italy in 1846 and settled at Casa Guidi in 1847, where they lived until EBB's death in 1861. The Brownings' son, Pen, was born here in 1849, and the house was visited by many writers, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Margaret Fuller, and Fanny Trollope. After the death of EBB and Browning, Pen worked to make the house a memorial for his parents—a result that didn't come to pass until after his death and the 1916 acquisition of Casa Guidi by the Browning Society. Having fallen under the care of various organizations throughout the 20th century, Casa Guidi is now preserved as an official landmark and museum managed by Eton College.

Parent Map

Key Locations: EBB and the Landmarks of Slavery
First Exhibitions of Hiram Powers's "Greek Slave"

Coordinates

Latitude: 43.765294700000
Longitude: 11.248064700000

Timeline of Events Associated with Casa Guidi

Date Event Manage
26 Oct 1850

Elizabeth Barrett Browning Publishes "Hiram Powers' Greek Slave"

Elizabeth Barrett Browning originally published "Hiram Powers' Greek Slave" in the second volume of Charles Dickens's Household Words. The poem considers The Greek Slave, a statue sculpted by American artist Hiram Powers, with whom she and Robert Browning were acquainted and near-neighbors in Florence. Because the statue was, at the time of the poem's inception, being displayed across the U.S. and Britain, it is likely that EBB saw a model cast of the statue for herself at Powers's studio in early 1847. "Hiram Powers' Greek Slave" is the fourth of the five poems EBB wrote about slavery and is primarily responsible for shifting the statue's popular context away from that of the Greek War of Independence that had initially inspired Powers' work and towards broader questions of morality surrounding slavery abroad in the United States.

 Title page of the first volume of Household Words.
29 Jun 1861

Death of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

On June 29, 1861, at the age of 55, Elizabeth Barrett Browning passes away of an undiagnosed illness at Casa Guidi, the home in Italy that she shared with her husband Robert Browning. As a child, EBB had been weakened by a series of ailments—viral infections, measles, and various other pains and fevers—and, though the Italian climate had proven largely beneficial for her poor health, she never fully recovered and remained sickly throughout adulthood.