Twice a year in Renaissance Florence, the streets and piazzas were filled with masked revelers, horse-drawn floats, torchlight processions, and song. Both the pre-Lenten Carnival and the particularly Florentine Calendimaggio which culminated in the Feast of St. John the Baptist, the city's patron, on June 24, featured canti carnaschialeschi—witty vernacular songs written to be sung in the festival streets. During the time of Lorenzo the Magnificent the artistic tone of the poetry and music was somewhat elevated, though the masked bands (often in drag) performing for the crowds still favored double entendres, from the merely playful to the downright obscene. Thus a piece like Heinrich Isaac's "Donna, di dentro dalla tua casa." may have been appreciated both for its clever composition and for its flirtatious innuendo. Though musically it shows few of the common characteristics of the canti, the simplicity of its harmonic language and possibly erotic text suggests a Carnival context.

"Donna, di dentro" follows the popular practice of the quodlibet (in Italy known as incatentature, chain-songs, or insalate), which cleverly mingles numerous unrelated tunes and texts throughout the piece. Isaac passes three songs before the listener's ears, deftly changing from voice to contrapuntal voice even as the mascherati dance through the streets. The text itself is a simple, rustic address to a lady, requesting one of the sweet flowers she keeps in her house, the scent of which brings joy to the heart of a man. Fragments of this tune are interspersed with "Fortuna d'un gran tempo," the popular good luck melody famously set by Josquin Desprez, and rude interjections of the equally well-known "Dammene un poco di quella mazacrocha," a commoner's demand for a stuffed rice-cake. All three inhabit the same bright C and F modes, all three flit maddengly between voices, and all three easily take a sexual meaning. In performance, the four singers might even have enlivened the act with pantomime.

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