The Savage Garden. Mark Mills

up at the arch, when he heard her voice.

      ‘Hello.’

      She was off to his left, beneath the boughs of a tree. Her long black hair was tied back off her face in a pony-tail and she was wearing a sleeveless cotton dress cinched at the waist with a belt.

      ‘You haven’t moved since I first saw you,’ she said in accented English, stepping towards him.

      He thought at first it was the dappled shade playing tricks with the light, but as she drew closer he could see that her smooth, high forehead was indeed marked with scars. One was short and sat just beneath the hairline in the centre. From here, another cleaved a diagonal path all the way to her left eyebrow.

      ‘I thought maybe the garden had a new statue,’ she said.

      Adam returned her smile. ‘I’m sorry, I was thinking.’

      He held her dark, almond eyes, conscious of not allowing his gaze to stray to her forehead. Not that she would have cared, he suspected. If she’d wanted to conceal the disfigurement she could quite easily have worn her hair differently, rather than drawing it straight back off her face.

      ‘You must be Adam.’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘I’m Antonella.’

      ‘The granddaughter, right?’

      ‘She told you about me?’

      ‘Only that you were harmless.’

      ‘Ah,’ she replied, a crooked gleam in her eye, ‘that’s because she thinks she knows me.’

      She craned her long neck, looking up at the inscription on the lintel of the arch.

      ‘What were you thinking?’ she asked.

      ‘It’s not symmetrical.’

      ‘No?’

      ‘The decorative panels at the side – look – the diagonals run the same way’

      It was hard to make out – the stone was weathered and stained with lichen – but there was no mistaking the anomaly.

      ‘I never noticed before,’ she said quietly. ‘What does it mean?’

      ‘I don’t know. Probably nothing.’ He glanced over at her. ‘It’s a bit overblown, don’t you think?’

      ‘Overblown?’

      ‘The arch. For the setting, I mean.’

      ‘I don’t know the word.’

      ‘Overblown. It means…pretentious.’

       ‘Pretenzioso? Maybe. A bit,’ she said. ‘You don’t like it?’

      ‘No, I do. It’s just –’

      He broke off, aware that he was in danger of sounding a bit, well, overblown himself.

      ‘No, tell me,’ she insisted. ‘I think I know what you mean.’

      The triumphal arch was a classical architectural form that had been revived during the Renaissance, he explained, but so far he’d found no precedent for this one in any of the other gardens he’d researched. Moreover, its inclusion seemed at odds with the discreet symbolism and subtle statements of the rest of the cycle.

      Maybe Antonella was being polite, but she asked if he had any other insights he was willing to share with her. He should have confessed it was early days still, but the prospect of a leisurely stroll in her company overrode these thoughts.

      The amphitheatre that fell away down the slope behind them was not exclusive to Villa Docci, he explained, although it was narrower and more precipitous than the one in the Sacro Bosco, the Sacred Wood, at Bomarzo near Rome. Interestingly, Pier Francesco Orsini had also dedicated that garden to his deceased wife, Giulia Farnese, although the parallels stopped there. The memorial garden at Villa Docci was an exercise in restraint compared to the riotous imagination on display in the Sacro Bosco, with its mausolea, nymphaea, loggias and temples, and its stupefying array of bizarre creatures carved from solid rock: sirens, sphinxes, dragons, lions, a giant turtle, even an African war elephant holding a dead soldier in its trunk.

      The more temperate approach at Villa Docci was exemplified by the statue of Flora on the plinth near the top of the amphitheatre. The corkscrew pose, with the left leg bent and resting on a perch, was a traditional stance, typical of the mid to late sixteenth century – a form that had found its highest expression in the sculptures of Giambologna and Ammannati. In fact, as the file pointed out, the statue of Flora was closely modelled on Giambologna’s marble Venus in the Boboli Gardens in Florence, although like many of the imitations spawned by that masterpiece, it lacked the original’s grace and vitality.

      ‘I don’t know about the others,’ said Antonella as they circled beneath Flora, ‘but for me she is alive.’

      Her look challenged him to contest the assertion. When he didn’t, she added, ‘Touch her leg.’

      He wished she hadn’t said it. He also wished she hadn’t reached out and run her hand up the back of the marble calf from the heel to the crook of the knee, because it left him no choice but to follow suit.

      He tried to experience something – he wanted to experience something – and he did.

      ‘What do you feel?’ asked Antonella.

      ‘I feel,’ he replied, ‘like a sweaty Englishman molesting a naked statue in the presence of a complete stranger.’

      Antonella gave a sudden loud laugh, her hand shooting to her mouth.

      ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Maybe you will see her differently with time.’

      ‘Maybe.’

      ‘Go on, please.’

      ‘Really?’

      ‘I come here every day if I can.’

      It wasn’t surprising, he continued, that the statue of Flora had been modelled on Venus, given the close link between the two goddesses. Both were associated with fertility and the season of spring. Indeed, it was quite possible that the goddess of love and the goddess of flowers appeared alongside each other in two of the most celebrated paintings to come out of the Renaissance: Sandro Botticelli’s Primavera and his Birth of Venus.

      ‘Really?’

      ‘It’s a new theory, very new’

      ‘Ah,’ said Antonella sceptically.

      ‘You’re right, it’s probably nothing,’ he shrugged, knowing full well that it wasn’t, not for her, not if she visited the garden as often as she claimed to.

      ‘Tell me anyway’

      There was no need to explain Flora’s story; it was in the file, which she had surely read. Her great-grandfather had even included the Latin lines from Ovid’s Fasti detailing how the nymph Chloris was pursued by Zephyrus, the west wind, who then violated her, atoning for this act by making her his wife and transforming her into Flora, mistress of all the flowers.

      No one disputed that Zephyrus and Chloris figured in Botticelli’s Primavera, but until now scholars had always read the figure standing to the left of them as the hora – the spirit – of springtime, scattering flowers. Hence the name of the painting.

      ‘But what if she’s really Flora?’ he asked.

      ‘After her transformation?’

      ‘Exactly.’

      ‘I don’t know. What if it is her?’

      The painting could then be read as an allegory for the nature of love. By pairing Flora – a product of lust, of Zephyrus’ passion – with the chaste figure of Venus,