One of the most unlikely men to come to power in Renaissance Italy, Alessandro de’ Medici, ruler of Florence from 1531 O to 1537, was probably born in Rome around 1512. He was illegitimate, and most contemporary writers say that his father was Lorenzo de’ Medici, duke of Urbino (grandson of the famous patron Lorenzo ‘the Magnificent’). A minority of sources point instead to Giulio de’ Medici, the future Pope Clement VII and Lorenzo’s cousin once removed. Others, perhaps more honestly, say it is impossible to know. Alessandro may not have been certain himself.
Information about his mother is no easier to come by. She is generally known as Simunetta, though one source gives her the name Anna, and the most likely scenario is that she worked as a maid in the Medici household. It was all too common for female servants to be sexually exploited by the men they worked for, and especially if (as one source tells us) Simunetta was enslaved then it would have been very hard indeed for her to refuse.
That rumour that Simunetta was a slave, combined with other sources describing her as ‘Moorish’ and ‘half-Negro’, along with the textual and visual evidence for Alessandro’s brown skin and curly black hair,the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans that began during Alessandro’s lifetime.
