St. Mark's Place becomes the stage for Fra Alberto's public humiliation: a festival venue where the disguise that had helped him deceive a woman is turned into a spectacle that reveals his fraud to the city.

Festival Setting

A festival hunt is planned for St. Mark's Place, with participants bringing people dressed as bears, wild men, and other figures. Fra Alberto's host offers to lead him there in disguise and then carry him away before the lady's kinsmen can recognize him. The square is thus introduced as a public gathering place, busy enough to offer cover for an escape but exposed enough to make concealment precarious.

The Public Spectacle

To pass Fra Alberto off as a wild man, the host smears him with honey, covers him in down, puts a chain around his neck and a mask over his face, and gives him a staff and two dogs. The host announces at the Rialto that people can see the Angel Gabriel at St. Mark's Place. Those who follow the announcement join the festival crowd, which gathers around the chained figure as the host presents him as the angel who visits Venetian women by night.

Exposure and Aftermath

When the host removes Fra Alberto's mask, the crowd recognizes him. The promised angelic spectacle collapses into public exposure: people insult him and throw filth at him. His fellow friars eventually unchain him, cover him with a gown, and carry him away to the convent amid the crowd's outcry. St. Mark's Place therefore marks the reversal of Fra Alberto's disguise: the setting that first gives him a way to evade his pursuers becomes the place where his false holiness is made visible.