Lisetta Reveals Her Affair with a False Angel

Lisetta Reveals Her Affair with a False Angel is the moment when Lisetta da Ca' Quirino’s vanity breaks the secrecy of her affair with Fra Alberto. Having mistaken his claim to be the angel Gabriel for truth, she tells a gossip that the angel visits her and shares her bed. The confidence passes rapidly through Venice; when Lisetta’s brothers-in-law come looking for the supposed visitor, Fra Alberto escapes through a window into the Grand Canal. Her boast transforms a deception conducted in private into a public scandal, though the immediate scene ends not with a reckoning but with Lisetta left disconsolate.

A private deception becomes a boast

Before the disclosure, Fra Alberto had persuaded Lisetta that he was the angel Gabriel. He presented their meetings as visits from an angel and represented their intimacy as a glimpse of heavenly experience. In their private exchange, Lisetta had been encouraged to accept this story: Fra Alberto claimed that Gabriel had transported his soul among roses and flowers, while Lisetta supplied a supposed sign of the angel’s visit, a mark beneath his left breast. The deception allowed the friar to continue visiting her in angelic guise.

The breach comes in a conversation about women’s beauty. Lisetta argues that her own charms surpass those of other women, then identifies the person whose judgment supposedly confirms her superiority: Gabriel, who, she says, loves her more than himself and considers her the fairest woman in the world. Her companion asks questions that encourage her to say more, rather than directly challenging the claim. Lisetta responds with increasing confidence, insisting that the angel does what her husband does not do as well and comes frequently to lie with her. The supposed proof of her beauty is therefore also an indiscreet disclosure of sexual intimacy.

Gossip carries the secret through Venice

The gossip does not confront Lisetta or expose her immediately. She keeps her amusement to herself, draws out the story, and leaves with the information. At an entertainment attended by many women, she recounts what Lisetta has said. Those listeners repeat it to their husbands and to other women; the next links in the chain spread it further. In less than two days, the story is known throughout Venice. The speed of its circulation sharply contrasts with the secrecy on which the affair had depended: a private performance between Lisetta and Fra Alberto becomes material for conversation across the city.

Lisetta’s brothers-in-law hear the report and act on it without first confronting her. They decide to find the angel and discover whether he can fly, a test that turns Fra Alberto’s celestial disguise into a practical target for investigation. For several nights they wait in ambush. The story does not describe Lisetta as deliberately summoning them or arranging a trap; her indiscretion has instead given them the knowledge with which to watch for Fra Alberto.

The attempted confrontation and escape

Fra Alberto gets some inkling of the matter and goes to Lisetta’s house one night to reprove her for having revealed their secret. The sequence matters: he comes because her indiscretion has endangered the affair, not because he knows the brothers-in-law have laid an ambush. He has barely taken off his clothes when the men, having seen him arrive, reach the door of her chamber and try to open it. The private encounter is thus interrupted at the moment when his disguise and nakedness leave him especially vulnerable to discovery.

Hearing them and guessing what is happening, Fra Alberto has no ordinary way out. He opens a window looking onto the Grand Canal and throws himself into the water. The canal is deep at that point, but he can swim well and is not hurt. He reaches the opposite bank and enters an open house, where he begs a poor man to save his life. To explain his nakedness and presence at that hour, he gives the man a story of his own devising. The man takes pity on him, puts him in his bed, and locks him in while going about his business.

The exposure left incomplete

Meanwhile, Lisetta’s brothers-in-law enter her chamber but do not find Fra Alberto. They find the traces of his angelic performance instead: he has fled, leaving his wings behind. Their plan to test the visitor’s ability to fly has not caught him, but the abandoned costume makes the deception visible in the room. They reproach Lisetta harshly and return home with the angel’s trappings, while she remains disconsolate. The account establishes the immediate consequences of her boast—citywide gossip, a near-capture, and the loss of Fra Alberto’s disguise—but does not relate a further punishment or final resolution for either of them.

Told by Fiammetta within the Decameron’s storytelling, the episode turns on the distance between Lisetta’s certainty and the evidence her words give away. She intends to cite the angel’s supposed admiration as confirmation of her beauty; instead, her account makes the affair public and gives her family a reason to investigate. The wings left in the chamber complete the reversal: the costume that had helped sustain the fiction becomes the material sign of its collapse.