Ginevra and Ambrogiuolo's Deception and Conflict

Ginevra and Ambrogiuolo of Piacenza are adversaries whose conflict turns on the difference between proof and truth. He never wins her consent or even speaks with her in her chamber: he steals objects and knowledge while she sleeps, then presents these fragments as evidence of an adultery that never occurred. His fraud sets her husband against her and drives her into years of disguise; her eventual public revelation reverses the deception and brings both punishment and restoration.

The wager and the invasion of Ginevra’s chamber

Ambrogiuolo’s scheme begins in Paris, where he disputes with Bernabo Lomellini over whether Ginevra can be induced to commit adultery. Bernabo stakes five thousand gold florins against Ambrogiuolo’s thousand. Ambrogiuolo undertakes to go to Genoa and, within three months, return with tokens that will make Bernabo accept his claim. The wager is not a test of Ginevra’s conduct: Ambrogiuolo intends to manufacture convincing evidence without obtaining her agreement.

In Genoa, he learns where Ginevra lives and confirms the report that she is reputedly chaste. Unable to persuade a poor woman who frequents the household to help him by other means, he bribes her to carry a specially made chest into Ginevra’s bedchamber. The woman presents it as something to be kept there for a few days. At night, when Ginevra is asleep, Ambrogiuolo opens the chest with tools and emerges into the lit chamber. The scheme depends on concealed entry and careful observation rather than a meeting between the two adversaries.

He examines the room’s furnishings and paintings, then approaches the bed, where Ginevra sleeps beside a little girl. He uncovers Ginevra and notices a mole beneath her left breast, surrounded by several hairs as red as gold. Though her beauty tempts him to risk lying beside her, he refrains, believing her reputation for resisting sexual advances. Instead, he takes a purse, a night-rail, rings, and girdles from her belongings. He hides again in the chest; on the third day the woman retrieves it, and Ambrogiuolo leaves Genoa with his stolen objects and observations. Ginevra has neither met him nor consented to anything he later claims.

Fabricated proof and real consequences

Back in Paris, Ambrogiuolo describes Ginevra’s bedchamber and displays the objects he has taken. Bernabo recognizes the room and his wife’s possessions, but points out that these might have been acquired through a servant. Ambrogiuolo supplies what seems to be more decisive evidence: his exact description of the mole and its red hairs. Bernabo’s changed expression betrays that the intimate detail is correct, and he accepts the wager as lost. Ambrogiuolo is paid the five thousand florins.

The detail is true, but the conclusion attached to it is false. Ambrogiuolo turns knowledge gained by secretly watching a sleeping woman into a claim that she gave him her belongings and slept with him. Bernabo treats this invasion as proof of Ginevra’s betrayal. On his way back toward Genoa, he stays at a country house rather than entering the city and sends a trusted servant to summon his wife. He secretly instructs the servant to kill her. The servant reports that she has carried out the order and that wolves devoured Ginevra; the report is false, but Bernabo believes it. Ambrogiuolo’s lie thus becomes lethal not through any encounter with Ginevra, but through Bernabo’s credulity and command.

Ginevra becomes Sicurano

Ginevra survives and adopts a male disguise, taking the name Sicurano. For six years she wanders in men’s clothing. Her identity is concealed even from the men implicated in her ruin, while her experience of Ambrogiuolo’s fraud shapes her opportunity to confront him. The disguise allows her to move through a world in which she can enter the Soldan’s service and eventually exercise authority that would not be available to her under her known identity.

At a merchants’ fair in Acre, where Sicurano serves as captain of the guard, Ginevra recognizes a purse and girdle among the goods displayed by Venetian merchants. Ambrogiuolo has brought them there as merchandise. She does not immediately disclose herself or accuse him; instead, she asks about the objects and listens as he boasts that Ginevra gave them to him after he slept with her. He also recounts the wager and says that Bernabo had her killed after believing his story. By hearing the fraud in Ambrogiuolo’s own account, Ginevra discovers not only the source of the objects but the full extent of the consequences he and Bernabo have attributed to her.

She keeps her composure and draws Ambrogiuolo into closer association, eventually persuading him to accompany her and his goods to Alexandria. There she gives him a warehouse and entrusts him with some of her money, while secretly arranging for Bernabo to be brought to the city. She has the Soldan summon both men and require Ambrogiuolo to repeat how he won the wager. Under pressure, he gives the account openly, expecting to repay the money and return the stolen objects, not understanding that the person directing the inquiry is Ginevra.

Recognition, judgment, and restoration

Once Ambrogiuolo has confessed, Sicurano asks Bernabo what he did to his wife. Bernabo admits that, in anger over the lost money and the shame he believed he had suffered, he ordered a servant to kill her. Ginevra then reveals that the accused woman is present: she identifies herself as the woman who has spent six years wandering in male disguise after Ambrogiuolo slandered her and Bernabo sent her to her supposed death. She opens the front of her clothing and shows her breast. Ambrogiuolo recognizes her and is struck silent; the Soldan, who had taken Sicurano for a man, is astonished before accepting the truth.

Ginevra’s exposure makes the distinction between evidence and its interpretation public. The possessions and bodily detail that Ambrogiuolo used to suggest adultery instead establish how he spied on and robbed her. Bernabo’s own confession reveals that he punished her without hearing her account. Ginevra nevertheless asks the Soldan to pardon him. Bernabo recognizes her, falls at her feet in tears, and seeks forgiveness; she grants it and embraces him. The reconciliation restores their marriage, though it does not erase the unequal risks and consequences that his belief in the fraud imposed on her.

The Soldan orders Ambrogiuolo bound to a stake, smeared with honey, and exposed in a high place until he falls of himself. Flies, wasps, and gadflies kill and consume him; his bones remain hanging as a public witness to his villainy. His goods are given to Ginevra, and the Soldan also gives her jewels, gold and silver vessels, and money valued at more than ten thousand doubloons. After a banquet in her and Bernabo’s honor, the Soldan equips a ship for their return to Genoa. They arrive wealthy and joyful, and Ginevra, believed dead, is received with particular honor and again regarded as a woman of great worth and virtue.

The relation’s meaning in the tale

The conflict is sustained by a double concealment: Ambrogiuolo hides inside a chest to gain access to Ginevra’s chamber, while Ginevra later hides her sex and name to survive and pursue the truth. The resemblance does not make their disguises morally equivalent. His concealment enables theft and a false accusation; hers is a response to danger and becomes the means by which she can bring the deception into the open.

The tale also places the physical details of Ginevra’s body at the center of a contest over who may define her reputation. Ambrogiuolo turns a private mark, observed without her knowledge, into a persuasive but fraudulent story. Ginevra’s public identification of herself restores the context he suppressed: the mark proves access, not intimacy, and the stolen possessions prove theft, not consent. Her confrontation culminates not merely in the deceiver’s punishment but in the recovery of her name and standing. The story’s opening account of women’s more restricted freedom to leave their chambers gives this reversal added force: Ginevra’s survival depends on passing through the world under a male identity, while the final recognition returns her to Genoa with her virtue publicly acknowledged.