MEDICI, LORENZO DE', DETTO LORENZINO

Lorenzo de' MEDICI, known as Lorenzino. — Born in Florence on 23 March 1514, died in Venice on 26 February 1548. He is the tyrannicide who murdered his cousin Alessandro (on the night of 5–6 January 1537), with whom, perhaps by calculation, he had been a companion in vice and a procurer of love affairs. A fugitive in Bologna, and after the defeat at Montemurlo, in Turkey and France, he finally reached Venice, where he was overtaken by the assassins of Cosimo I. His *Rime* are cold and artificial, but his comedy *Aridosia* is well constructed (though derived from Plautus and Terence), with vivid characters and incisive action. Vigorous and thoughtful is his *Apologia*, in which he defends his deed with examples from antiquity: prose full of vigour, among the most celebrated in our literature.