The husband is suing the alleged lover under a section of the Italian penal code which allows for legal action to be taken where there no contract exists between two parties.

“While the wife is bound to her husband by her vows of fidelity, no contract links the two men,” said Mr Brusco, whose last high-profile case was the Meredith Kercher trial in Perugia, in which Amanda Knox and her former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were initially convicted but then acquitted on charges of murder and sexual assault.