Medici, Lorenzino De'

Related Category: Italian History: Biographies

(lōrāntsē´nō dā mĕ´dĭchē, Ital. mā´dēchē), 1515–47, member of the cadet branch of the Medici family. A boon companion of Alessandro de' Medici, he secretly plotted the duke's murder—possibly out of republican convictions. With a hired assassin, he stabbed Alessandro to death (1537) and fled to Venice, where he was eventually assassinated on the orders of Cosimo I de' Medici, the successor to Alessandro. He is the hero of Alfred de Musset's drama, Lorenzaccio (1833).