Laure de Noves, c.1308-1348.
This is going to be a tough one for those who are not connoisseurs of poetical styles, and I find her the strangest inclusion in the gardens. Laure de Noves was a daughter of minor aristocracy, and as far as we know did nothing actively interesting with her life. She lived in Avignon, where the writer and poet Petrarch happened to spend some time. According to legend (and somewhat according to his own poems, but those are hard to take literally), he saw her leaving church one day and instantly fell in love with her. He proceeded to write nearly all his poems about her.
This is important because Petrarch developed his own style of poem, the Petrarchan sonnet, and because he was one of the earliest humanist philosophers and writers of the Renaissance. So nearly all of these new innovative sonnets were about Laure de Noves. Despite the fact that he hardly spoke to her, she married someone else, and she did nothing in particular, she's renowned for being the earliest poetical muse, and an embodiment of the idea of courtly love, where a knight or troubadour pines after a lady above his station in love without ever receiving anything in return.
There is some debate as to whether or not Petrarch's "Laura" was real, or if he used some imaginary ideal woman to write his poems. If she was real it seems sure that she was this woman, Laure de Noves, who lived in the same town, was the right age and station, and had a similar death date. It's not known whether she was aware of Petrarch's fixation, either.
Interestingly, she is an ancestor of the Marquis de Sade, who took the idea of love in the complete opposite direction.
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