His father, Cardinal Giulilo, appointed
Allessandro a regent for Florence; Giulilo changed his name to Clement
VII when he became the Pope in 1523. Alessandro was the last member of
the powerful Medici family to rule Florence; he was also the first to be
a hereditary duke. He was assassinated in 1537 by political rivals.
Many consider Alessandro de Medici to be the first black head of state
in the modern western world.
When
Emperor Charles V sacked Rome in 1527, the Florentines took advantage of the turmoil in Italy to reinstall the Republic; both Alessandro and
Ippolito fled, along with the rest of the Medici and their main supporters, including the Pope's regent, Cardinal
Silvio Passerini, with the exception of the eight-year-old
Catherine de' Medici, who was left behind.
Michelangelo, then occupied in creating a funerary chapel for the
Medici,
initially took charge of building fortifications around Florence in
support of the Republic; he later temporarily fled the city. Clement
eventually made his peace with the Emperor, and with the support of
Imperial troops, the Republic was overwhelmed after a lengthy siege, and
the Medici were restored to power in the summer of 1530.
Clement assigned Florence to nineteen-year-old Alessandro, who had
been made a duke, an appointment that was purchased from Charles. He
arrived in Florence to take up his rule on 5 July 1531 and was made
hereditary Duke of Florence 9 months later by the Emperor (as Tuscany
lay outside the Papal States), thereby signalling the end of the
Republic
His many enemies among the exiles declared that his rule was harsh,
depraved and incompetent, an assessment debated by later historians. One
relic of his rule sometimes pointed out as a symbol of Medici
oppression is the massive
Fortezza da Basso, today the largest historical monument of
Florence. In 1535 the Florentine opposition sent his cousin Ippolito to appeal to
Charles V
against some actions of the Duke, but Ippolito died en route; rumors
were spread that he had been poisoned at Alessandro's orders.
In a late replay of the kind of medieval civil politics that had long
revolved around pope and emperor, commune and lord, the Emperor
supported Alessandro against the republicans. In 1536, Charles V married
his natural daughter
Margaret of Austria to Alessandro. For his own inclinations, Alessandro seems to have remained faithful to one mistress,
Taddea Malaspina, who bore his only children
Giulio de' Medici (c. 1533/37-1600), who also had illegitimate issue, and
Giulia de' Medici, who married her cousin Bernardetto de' Medici, Signore di Ottaiano, and had issue.
In 1537 his distant cousin
Lorenzino de' Medici, nicknamed "Lorenzaccio" ("bad Lorenzo"), assassinated him. (This event is the subject of Alfred de Musset's play "
Lorenzaccio.")
Lorenzino entrapped Alessandro through the ruse of a promised arranged
sexual encounter with Lorenzino's sister Laudomia, a beautiful widow. For fear of starting an uprising if news of his death got out, Medici
officials wrapped Alessandro's corpse in a carpet and secretly carried
it to the cemetery of San Lorenzo, where it was hurriedly buried.
In
Valladolid (Spain), where the imperial court of Charles V was established, a solemn funeral was celebrated.
Lorenzino, in a declaration published later, said that he had killed
Alessandro for the sake of the republic. When the anti-Medici faction
failed to rise, Lorenzino fled to
Venice, where he was killed in 1548. The Medici supporters (called
"Palleschi" from the balls on the Medici arms) ensured that power then passed to
Cosimo I de' Medici, the first of the "junior" branch of the
Medici to rule
Florence.
[8]
Alessandro was survived by two natural children of Taddea's: a son,
Giulio (aged four at the time of his father's death) married to Lucrezia Gaetani, and a daughter,
Giulia married firstly to
Francesco Cantelmo, the Count of Alvito and the Duke of Popoli and then
Bernadetto de' Medici, prince of Ottaiano.
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