A Life Between Florence and Venice The air in Casa Guidi, Florence, carries the weight of a specific morning on 9 March 1849. Robert Wiedeman Barrett Browning arrives as a robust, rosy child, the long-awaited son of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning. His very name, often shortened to Pen, stems from a childhood struggle to pronounce his middle name, Wiedeman. He grows up in an environment saturated with literature and art…