Alessandro de' Medici

The man in this portrait had been dead for more than 20 years by the time it was painted. He is Alessandro de' Medici, the first of the family to rule Florence as a duke, and he was killed in January 1537 by his own cousin Lorenzino, who lured him to a private room with the promise of a woman and murdered him there. That made him the founder of the ducal line whose later members, Cosimo I above all, wanted his image for the family's picture galleries. So around 1560 Bronzino's workshop supplied one, built up from earlier likenesses rather than from life. He wears dark armor and turns his head to the side, the settled pose for a Medici ruler. The dukedom he began passed, after his death, to a distant cousin, the young Cosimo who would carry the family to its height.