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Updated: May 1, 2025
Three years after her marriage her only son was born. The Italians ever after called her "the mother of the beautiful child." And now some of her ablest and strongest work was done. Her Casa Guidi Windows appeared in 1851. It is the story of the struggle for Italian liberty. In the same volume were published the Portuguese Sonnets, really her own love-life.
The ex-Queen was already dreaming of a wonderful pastoral play, in which Don Alberto Altieri was to appear as Endymion, and she herself, the elderly and slightly bedraggled virgin queen, would play Diana. There was Guidi to write the verses, Stradella should compose the music, and Christina herself would get most of the credit for the work.
'That is my master's name, answered Cucurullo, 'not mine, and he is not deformed. Therefore, if you are jesting with me, I beg you to pass on in peace. 'Your pardon, sir, the man said, lifting his hat, 'have I not the honour of addressing Signor Alessandro Guidi, the poet, for whom I have a message from Her Majesty the Queen of Sweden, whose servant I am?
Unfortunately her life was a short one; in the full bloom of her intellect her frail health gave way, and she died leaving a noble record of genius to future ages, and a sweet memory to those who were her contemporaries. The Florentines, who, like all Italians, greatly appreciate genius, whether native or foreign, have placed a commemorative tablet on Casa Guidi, the house Mrs. Browning inhabited.
Two other Florentine artists of the same era with Fra Angelico were MASOLINO, whose real name was PANICALE, and TOMMASO GUIDI, called MASACCIO on account of his want of neatness. The style of these two masters was much the same, but Masaccio became so much the greater that little is said of Masolino. The principal works of Masaccio are a series of frescoes in the Brancacci Chapel in Florence.
Later, when his walks and his visits had come to an end, I used often to visit him in "the little house under the wall of the city, directly back of the Carmine, in a bye-street called the Via Nunziatina, not far from that in which the Casa Guidi stands," which Mr. Forster thus describes.
I shall never forget that beautiful July morning spent in the Browning home in London. The poet-wife had gone out from it, and lay buried in Florence, but here were her books and her pictures. Here was a marble bust, the hair clustering about the face, and a smile on the lips that showed happiness. Near by was another bust of the idolized only child, of whom she wrote in Casa Guidi Windows:
To satisfy her longing for a better understanding of people and events, she turned to books, first to Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Casa Guidi Windows, which she called "a grand poem, so fitting to our terrible struggle," then to her Sonnets from the Portuguese, and George Eliot's popular Adam Bede, recently published.
"The scene of the declaration in By the Fireside" Mrs Orr informs us, "was laid in a little adjacent mountain-gorge to which Browning walked or rode." Only a few weeks were given to Florence. In perfect autumnal weather the occupants of Casa Guidi started for Rome.
Of this room in Casa Guidi, Kate Field wrote in the Atlantic Monthly, September, 1861: "They who have been so favored can never forget the square ante-room, with its great picture and piano-forte, at which the boy Browning passed many an hour; the little dining room covered with tapestry, and where hung medallions of Tennyson, Carlyle, and Robert Browning; the long room filled with plaster casts and studies, which was Mr.
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