One author considered her as an allegorical being; another discovered her to be a type of the Virgin Mary; another thought her an allegory of poetry and repentance.

Some denied her even allegorical existence, and deemed her a mere phantom beauty, with which the poet had fallen in love, like Pygmalion with the work of his own creation.

All these caprices about Laura's history have been long since dissipated, though the principal facts respecting her were never distinctly verified, till De Sade, her own descendant, wrote his memoirs of the Life of Petrarch.
Petrarch himself relates that in 1327, exactly at the first hour of the 6th of April, he first beheld Laura in the church of St.Clara of Avignon,[A] where neither the sacredness of the place, nor the solemnity of the day, could prevent him from being smitten for life with human love.

In that fatal hour he saw a lady, a little younger than himself[B] in a green mantle sprinkled with violets, on which her golden hair fell plaited in tresses.

She was distinguished from all others by her proud and delicate carriage.