This morning I went to a talk by Liane Lang, a German-born artist who studied at the Royal Academy Schools and whose work I very much admire for the way that it combines history, fiction and installation. Her most recent project is based on the Casa Guidi, the Brownings’ house just south of the Palazzo Pitti in Florence and re-imagines Elizabeth Barrett Browning in situ as a doll. I found it slightly spooky because years ago, when I was fourteen, I stayed in the house which the Brownings lived in in Asolo. When I was coming down to dinner one evening as a suggestible teenager, I saw an elderly lady come out of the upstairs drawing room and cross the landing to the bedroom next door. I’ve always assumed that the lady was Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
