Niccolosa

Niccolosa is a hired companion at Filippo’s country house whose deliberately performed flirtation becomes the bait in a prank on Calandrino. Her role is small in the sequence of events but active: she helps turn Calandrino’s vanity and credulity into a public humiliation, while the staged encounter ends with Tessa finding him in a barn.

Identity and Setting

Niccolosa is introduced at the estate in Camerata, where Filippo, a young man without a wife, sometimes brings women for a day or two. She is one of these visitors. Mangione, described as a dissolute man, keeps her at his disposal in a house at Camaldoli and hires her out. The tale describes her as attractive, well dressed, and, for a woman of her kind, reasonably well mannered and spoken.

The estate is also the workplace of Bruno, Buffalmacco, Nello, and Calandrino, who have been engaged to paint its newly built mansion. Its rooms, courtyard, well, and barn form the practical stage for the trick: the painters are present because of their work, while Filippo’s occasional visitors make flirtation and sexual intrigue part of the household’s ordinary pattern. Niccolosa enters this setting not as a painter or member of the family, but as Filippo’s guest and a participant in the amusement his household helps arrange.

The Encounter with Calandrino

One day at noon, Niccolosa comes out of her chamber wearing a white petticoat, her hair twisted around her head, to wash her hands and face at the courtyard well. Calandrino arrives for water and greets her familiarly. She returns the greeting and looks him over, more because he strikes her as an odd fellow than because she is attracted to him. He, however, sees her as beautiful and begins lingering in the courtyard rather than returning with the water to the other painters.

Niccolosa notices his gaze and intermittently looks back at him, adding small, theatrical sighs to encourage his attention. Calandrino takes those gestures as proof that she has fallen passionately in love with him. When Filippo calls her back into the chamber, Calandrino returns to work sighing, and Bruno immediately notices his distraction. Calandrino confides that the woman has supposedly become enamoured of him, though he has only just seen her. His confident misreading supplies the joke: Niccolosa’s deliberately ambiguous performance is treated as a declaration of desire.

Bruno already knows who Niccolosa is and understands that she is not Filippo’s wife. He nevertheless lets Calandrino believe he will investigate the matter and help him. In fact, he tells Nello and Buffalmacco about the infatuation, then privately approaches Filippo and Niccolosa. The three arrange what each will say and do so they can enjoy Calandrino’s passion. Niccolosa is therefore not merely the unwitting object of his fantasy; she knowingly cooperates in sustaining it.

The Staged Seduction

That evening, the painters go down to the courtyard, where Filippo and Niccolosa are present. Calandrino ogles her and makes grotesque faces, while she behaves in whatever way she thinks will inflame him. Filippo pretends to be occupied with the others and not to notice. After they leave for Florence, Bruno tells Calandrino that his performance has made a powerful impression and encourages him to continue. Calandrino even sends Niccolosa a message offering her what he calls a thousand measures of the substance that makes women pregnant and declaring himself her servant.

The arrangement then turns into a trap. Nello, who has helped plan the joke despite being someone Calandrino distrusts, goes to Calandrino’s wife, Tessa, and tells her that her husband is in love with a woman and has arranged a meeting. Tessa believes him and hurries to the estate with Nello. Meanwhile, Filippo withdraws from view, leaving Calandrino to think the opportunity is his. In the courtyard, Niccolosa approaches him and speaks with greater familiarity than before. Calandrino touches her with his script, and she immediately turns toward the barn, where he follows.

Inside, Niccolosa shuts the door, embraces him, and throws him down onto the straw. She straddles him, holds his shoulders, and performs intense longing while keeping him from drawing near her face. Her mock tenderness stretches out his expectation: when he begs to kiss her, she makes him wait, saying she first wants to look at him. Bruno, Buffalmacco, and Filippo watch and listen. Niccolosa’s performance gives the concealed audience its spectacle, while Calandrino remains unaware that his supposed triumph is being staged for their amusement.

Exposure and Narrative Role

Tessa arrives with Nello and bursts through the barn door. Niccolosa springs up and runs to join Filippo; Tessa attacks Calandrino, scratching his face and dragging him by the hair. Niccolosa’s exit ends her direct part in the scene, but the change is decisive: the secret encounter Calandrino believed he controlled becomes an exposure arranged by the people around him. The story’s immediate consequence for her is departure from the barn; it does not describe a later reckoning for her.

Niccolosa’s part depends on performance and concealment. Her sighs, glances, and staged embrace appear to confirm Calandrino’s hopes, but their real function is to make him conspicuous to his hidden audience and vulnerable to Tessa’s arrival. The episode also gives her an unusual degree of agency within the prank: she participates in the deception and controls the pace of the barn encounter, even as the broader scheme is coordinated by Bruno, Filippo, and Nello. The comedy turns on the gap between the desire Calandrino imagines and the shared joke he fails to recognize.