Portrait of Alessandro de' Medici, Duke of Florence

Alessandro de' Medici became the first duke of Florence in 1532, and within five years he was dead, stabbed in his own bedroom by his cousin Lorenzino, who had lured him there with the promise of a woman and then fled the city. He was still in his twenties. Alessandro's mother was a servant in the Medici household, very likely of African descent, and he is often called the first man of colour to rule a European state. His murder ended one Medici line and handed Florence to a distant cousin, Cosimo, then just 17, who would hold the city for the rest of the century.