The man who kissed the Primavera
Magnus Linklater
It is not often you get the opportunity to stand in front of a great painting and know that a little bit of your DNA clings to the canvas. When that genetic trace is the result of a kiss, then what you have is more than a story, it is a romance.
Last summer, my wife and I made a pilgrimage to the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, and headed for the room which houses the masterpieces of the 15th century. In the middle of it, surrounded as always by a reverential crowd, was a picture that is the crowning achievement of the Renaissance – Botticelli’s Primavera. It is a strange and elaborate painting, celebrating the arrival of spring and the banishment of winter. A half-clad God – Mercury, possibly – stands on the left, his arm raised in salute or warning; three graces, clad in diaphanous silk, dance together, while Cupid hovers above them; the principal figure in the centre is a pregnant Venus, fully clothed, her eyes cast down. But it is the young woman on the right of the canvas who captures our attention. This is spring, the Primavera herself, stepping barefoot through the trees, a shimmering gown, decorated with flowers, clinging to her curves. Around her bare neck is a garland. Gathering up the folds of her dress as she walks, she seems to bear all the promise of a new season. But is her face that captivates. It is the only one that looks straight out at us, and it has an expression that is hard to define, half-longing, half-teasing, full of anticipation. It is a face of singular beauty.
Sixty-one years ago, my father, Eric Linklater, kissed the Primavera on the lips. Exactly how and exactly where this happened, I shall explain. But as I gazed up at her last summer, I thought I caught a glance of shared recollection in her face, and I remembered what my father had written at the time in his book, ‘The Art of Adventure’: ‘Some day I shall see you again, aloft and remote on your proper wall in the Uffizi, and while with a decently hidden condescension I listen to the remarks of my fellow-tourists, I shall regard you with a certain intimacy; with a lonely, proud, and wistful memory.’
The story goes back to July 1944, and the steady advance of the Eighth Army north through Italy. The Germans have been holding up the British and American forces at every point – from the beaches of Anzio to the heights of Monte Cassino, and now they are fighting in the streets of Florence, where all the bridges over the Arno, except for the Ponte Vecchio, have been blown up.
My father is having the time of his life. He is 45, a major in the Royal Engineers, and he is on assignment for the War Office, where his boss is Sir Walter Elliot, former Secretary of State for Scotland, and a man with a keen eye for a good writer. Elliot has commissioned my father to write the official history of the Eighth Army campaign, and since this has involved lengthy conversations with various generals, including the Eighth Army’s commander, General Alexander, for whom he has acquired a great liking, he has gathered much valuable material. But he has an eye for rather more than the monotony of company dispositions and troop manoeuvres, and he has hitched a lift with the colourful BBC reporter, Wynford Vaughan Thomas, to try and get as close to the retreating Germans as he can. Overtaking the crawling tanks and tank-transporters of the British army in their dusty jeep, they head north from Siena, and, on July 30, arrive at a 16th-century Tuscan castle, 30 miles outside Florence. They are about two thousand yards from the Germans’ forward position.
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