Camerata appears in two separate tales as a country setting for encounters that begin within otherwise ordinary domestic life. One estate, used by Gianni Lotteringhi’s household in summer, becomes the discreet meeting place of Mistress Tessa and Federigo di Neri Pegolotti. Another, a grand mansion belonging to Niccolo Cornacchini, houses painters and provides the courtyard where Calandrino first notices Niccolosa. Together, these settings give Camerata a recurring narrative role as a place where privacy, opportunity, and comic complication meet.

The summer house and its secret signal

Mistress Tessa spends most of the summer at a country house her husband, Gianni Lotteringhi, owns at Camerata. Gianni sometimes comes there to eat and sleep, but usually returns in the morning to his shop and his duties among the Laudsingers. His absences create the opportunity for Tessa, who is in love with Federigo, to arrange their first meeting through a serving-maid.

After Federigo visits and the two become lovers, they devise a way to meet without having to send the maid each time. From a vineyard adjoining the house, he is to watch a pole bearing the Donkey-skull signal. Its muzzle turned toward Florence means that he may safely come after dark; turned toward Fiesole of the parish priest’s mistaken bedmate, it warns him that Gianni is there. The signal turns the surrounding landscape into a practical system of communication, allowing the lovers to coordinate visits while Gianni remains unaware.

Garden, household, and interrupted plans

The house’s garden provides another route for private arrangements. On one evening when Federigo is expected, Tessa prepares two boiled capons, eggs, and wine for him. Gianni arrives unexpectedly, and Tessa, unable to explain the meal without arousing suspicion, has the food carried to the garden and left beneath a peach tree. In her agitation, she forgets to tell the maid to wait and warn Federigo that Gianni has come.

Federigo arrives after dark and knocks at the door, which is close to the bedchamber. Gianni hears the knock and draws Tessa’s attention to it. The episode makes the house’s closeness work both ways: its private spaces permit the affair, but the near door and bedroom also make a visitor’s arrival difficult to conceal. The garden meal, intended to preserve the lovers’ meeting, instead marks how easily their arrangements can be unsettled by an unexpected household presence.

The mansion and the painters

A separate Camerata estate belongs to Niccolo Cornacchini, a wealthy townsman who has built a magnificent mansion there. He hires Bruno and Buffalmacco to paint it, and they bring Nello and Calandrino into the work. The mansion is not described as the same house used by Gianni and Tessa; it is another property at Camerata, with a different household and purpose.

Because Niccolo’s family is usually absent and the house has furnished chambers, beds, and an old serving-woman to guard it, his unmarried son Filippo sometimes brings a woman there for a day or two. On one such occasion, he brings Niccolosa, who is kept by Mangione at a house at Camaldoli. The mansion’s worksite and temporary lodging thus overlap: painters are employed there, while Filippo uses its relative privacy for his own diversions.

The courtyard encounter

One day at noon, Niccolosa comes out of her chamber in a white petticoat, her hair twisted up, to wash at a well in the courtyard. Calandrino comes there for water and greets her familiarly. She returns the greeting and looks him over chiefly because he seems an odd fellow, not because she is attracted to him. Calandrino, however, reads her glances differently and begins lingering in the courtyard rather than returning to his fellow painters.

The two Camerata settings therefore stage contrasting kinds of secrecy. At Gianni’s country house, the lovers rely on a deliberately arranged sign and a garden path to manage meetings around a husband’s movements. At Niccolo’s mansion, Calandrino’s infatuation begins through an accidental encounter during ordinary work. In both tales, the estate’s private spaces create possibilities for concealed or unexpected contact, while doors, courtyards, gardens, and the presence of others shape what can happen next.