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The Black Prince of Florence: The Spectacular Life and Treacherous World of Alessandro de' Medici Paperback – July 8, 2020

4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 226 ratings

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Born to a dark-skinned maid and Lorenzo II de' Medici, the illegitimate Alessandro was groomed for power. In 1532, at the age of nineteen, backed by the Holy Roman Emperor--his future father-in-law--and the Pope, he became Duke of Florence, facing down family rivals and oligarchs and inheriting the grandest dynasty of the Italian Renaissance. Catherine Fletcher's The Black Prince of Florence is the first complete account of the real-life counterpart to Machiavelli's Prince.

After ruling for a turbulent six years, Alessandro was murdered in 1537 during a late-night tryst arranged by a scheming cousin. As Fletcher puts it, he was assassinated twice: "first with a sword, then with a pen." Following his death, Alessandro's reign was dismissed by his enemies--of which every Medici prince had many, and Alessandro more than his share--and his death painted as tyrannicide. It was in the years and centuries that followed that his racial origin became a focus, first by those seeking to emphasize his "savagery" and thus to justify his murder, and later to argue his case as the first ruler of color in the Western world. In 1931, Arturo Alfonso Schomburg, founder of the famous collection of African history in Harlem, wrote an article about Alessandro in the magazine
The Crisis, then edited by W.E.B. Du Bois, calling him the "Negro Medici."

Defined by intrigue, opulence, sexual conquest, and an endless struggle to retain power, Alessandro's life and afterlife reveal how racial identity has played out over the centuries, and to what degree it remains in the eye of the beholder. In this captivating biography of an intriguing and forgotten figure, Fletcher does full justice to his remarkable story, unraveling centuries-old mysteries, exposing forgeries, and bringing to life the epic personalities--artists, popes, queens, and pimps--of one of the most colorful periods in history.
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"[O]ffers an engrossing envoi that contextualizes this prince's little-known legacy....Sure-footed and novelistic....[O]ffers fresh research while also soliciting a broad popular readership."--John Gagné, The Historian

"[A]n enviably accessible and entertaining prose style...Recommended."--CHOICE

"[A] gripping narrative...It is impossible to finish this medieval melodrama without thinking that it would make a riveting series for an enterprising TV producer."--The Economist

"Fletcher's first book, The Divorce of Henry VIII, was a study of Vatican intrigue that demonstrated her ability to use rarely accessed Italian archives to create a gripping and original account of a well-worn subject. Here she has used the same skills to even greater effect, creating a compelling portrait of a forgotten man--himself both brutal and brutalised--once at the very heart of the Renaissance world order. Her narrative follows the extraordinary arc of Alessandro's life closely, but also uses it to illuminate the bloody opulence of Renaissance Italian politics in all its squalid, operatic glory." --The Financial Times

"Nothing in sixteenth century history is more astonishing to our era than the career of Alessandro de' Medici. His story, told by an exact and fluent historian, challenges our preconceptions. Catherine Fletcher's eye for the skewering detail makes the citizens of renaissance Florence live again: courtesans and cardinals, artists and assassins." --Hilary Mantel, author of Wolf Hall

"Fletcher displays an excellent comprehension of the Medici family and Renaissance political maneuvering. The connections between ruling and royal families, intermarriages, feuds, and assassinations can boggle the mind, but she carefully separates friends from enemies... Medici fans will expand their awareness of the family's broad reach, and Renaissance students will discover Machiavelli's models for The Prince." --Kirkus

"This is an accomplished and original account of an extraordinary and much misrepresented episode in Italian history. Catherine Fletcher provides a newly sympathetic portrait of a monarch whose rule in Florence was even more unlikely than Henry VII's presence on the English throne." --Diarmaid MacCulloch, author of The Reformation

"In this revelatory work, Fletcher rescues [Allessandro de' Medici] from the well-known caricature his opponents manufactured while revealing his strengths and weaknesses as an often populist Medici prince...Throughout this compelling narrative, de' Medici's unlikely story and extraordinary life finally feel revealed as Fletcher gives him a welcome new complex legacy." --Publishers Weekly, Fall 2016 "Top Ten Picks for History"

"Fletcher paints a perceptive picture of mixed loyalties, jealousy and duplicity... The most revealing arguments of the book regard Alessandro's ethnicity and what it did, or more importantly did not, signify to contemporaries. Fletcher's book is extensively researched and, like the best stories, a compelling read." --Historical Novels Review

"A scintillating book that glisters and gleams with stabbings, poisonings, adultery and intrigue-and a startling reminder of how visceral and dangerous Renaissance Florence was. The drama of events is perfectly complemented by careful scholarship and lucid writing. This is everything a historical biography should be." --Ian Mortimer, author of The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England

"Packed with intrigue...Fletcher describes with cool menace the plotting and politicking that dominated Alessandro's rule... brought splendidly to life in this excellent book." --Dan Jones, Sunday Times (UK)

"Like a detective, Fletcher interrogates her witnesses...But it is among the detailed records of Alessandro's wardrobe-keepers that she finds her treasure...These lend her narrative a sensuous vividity." --Frances Wilson, Sunday Telegraph (UK)

"As gripping as Othello... Fletcher's approach is scholarly yet dramatic, immersed in Renaissance glamour." --The Spectator

"Bold, Breathless and full of suspense." -- Daisy Dunn, The Times (UK)

"Catherine Fletcher is entirely at ease amid the Renaissance world and its archival resources, and her details, particularly those involving dress, feasting, and ceremonial, are generously deployed in the work of recovering a neglected episode of Florentine history." --Literary Review

"Fletcher recounts [Alessandro de' Medici's] life, and even more so the times, in clear and often vivid prose with an eye for interesting detail." --Los Angeles Review of Books

"The Black Prince is a dark and murderous tale that is exceptionally well-told. It leaves the reader rushing from page to page wanting more."--New York Journal of Books

"Fletcher's research is impeccable... and her attention to detail proves excellent."--Washington Free Beacon

"An absorbing tale of betrayal and deadly political alliances during the Renaissance."--Washington Independent Review of Books

"Alessandro de' Medici's life in sixteenth-century Italy speaks volumes about the emerging category of race. In the time since his death, Alessandro has been accorded a dual identity: as the black tyrant who put a violent end to the republican liberty of Florence and as the first person of black African ancestry to rule a major city-state during the Renaissance. Both stories settle on race as definitive of Alessandro's historical significance, notwithstanding the fact that a clear definition of race cannot be had." -- Renaissance Quarterly

"With meticulous attention to detail, in The Black Prince of Florence Catherine Fletcher eloquently sets the life of Alessandro against the backdrop of papal power and crisis of dynastic legitimacy."--Renaissance and Reformation

Book Description

The tumultuous life and dramatic death of Alessandro de' Medici, ruler of Florence, revealed through archives and narrative verve

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Oxford University Press (July 8, 2020)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 338 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0190092149
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0190092146
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 13.7 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8.27 x 5.51 x 0.7 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 226 ratings

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Catherine Fletcher
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I'm a historian of Renaissance and early modern Europe and author of books including The Beauty and the Terror: An Alternative History of the Italian Renaissance, The Black Prince of Florence: The Spectacular Life and Treacherous World of Alessandro de' Medici and The Divorce of Henry VIII: The Untold Story. My next book, coming June 2024 in the UK with international editions to follow is The Roads to Rome: A History. Podcast and radio credits include "You're Dead to Me", "In Our Time" and "Free Thinking". I'm currently Professor of History at Manchester Metropolitan University.

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4.4 out of 5 stars
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Top reviews from the United States

  • Reviewed in the United States on July 19, 2023
    Fletcher has written a gripping, informative account of a man who won life's lottery but didn't get much time to enjoy it. The bitter rivalries within the Medici family and between the Medici and rival factions look like prime material for TV or movies, especially with the race angle -- handled scrupulously here -- thrown in. Alessandro may not have been a great man, with little in the way of a historical character arc, but he's at the center of a great story of the decline of a great family, even as they rise to the highest levels they ever occupied politically or socially.
  • Reviewed in the United States on November 8, 2017
    This book thoroughly covered the familial struggle for succession among the potential candidates for the first Medici Duke, an honor made open to them by the circumstances that re-installed them to power in Florence and by virtue of their then powerful Medici Pope. The author's thesis that the African/Italian illegitimate son of a previous Medici Pope was always considered a prime candidate for the family's elevated post is proven with many facts, some suppositions and a lot of anecdotes. The thesis looses some credibitlity because of this constancy It is as if the author can't believe the reader believes her argument. There are also far too many data points to back up this constant defense, making the argument tiresome. A good editor was needed but otherwise a good exploration of the brief life and fame of Allesandro Medici, may he rest in more peace than life afforded him.
    7 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on November 13, 2021
    This book was well written and researched. It is also a fascinating read. Alex still remains and intriguing enigma after finishing the book because you realize how successful his enemies and successor were at distorting his story. One of the tidbits I found most fascinating about the Duke was that his mistress and mother of his children, was a domestic violence survivor. It’s hard to imagine how he was able to sustain a 6-year relationship with a wealthy and independent widowed domestic violence survivor, produce two children with her, and be the sexual monster Italians remember him to be.
    2 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on January 1, 2022
    This volume is well-researched and well crafted. It grabs the reader from the very beginning.
    One person found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on July 29, 2017
    Meticulously researched; seriously, yet unconventionally analytical; judiciously articulated. This work is a must for any scholar intent on serious examination of the Renaissance as diverse and globally informed conceptual space. Europe becomes more than our comfortable clichés; the world, as a whole, becomes contributor those things we regard as solely our own.
    3 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on June 27, 2021
    There is a lot of useful information on a little-known figure. However, I felt that if the author was going to spend so many words on describing wardrobe and accessories, she should have justified it with more explanation of why these things were so important to Renaissance noblemen and women and how much of their wealth was expended on them. On the other hand, the account at the end of the racist canceling of this prince’s heritage is quite valuable.
    2 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on November 14, 2016
    Interesting topic, but really more of a New Yorker article. Not much known about his early life.
    6 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on February 5, 2020
    Even though this character was loosely interpreted in The Leonardo series on a pay channel, this bio is the real deal!!
    2 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

  • Greg Galbraith
    5.0 out of 5 stars Worthwhile Read
    Reviewed in Canada on July 23, 2022
    I've always wanted to get the lowdown on Alessandro and this book did the trick. Easy to read despite the amount of space given to the Duke's inventory of belongings. Given the lack of primary sources on him, it is understandable why this was used to get a feel for his personal interests.

    Now I want to find a good book on Grand Duke Cosimo I. Suggestions anyone?
  • kate coleridge
    5.0 out of 5 stars alessandro brought to life
    Reviewed in France on March 15, 2017
    Excellently researched, very well written and witty too. Superb detail of the every day lives of these extraordinary people. Eminently readable
  • Brookfield
    5.0 out of 5 stars Racy tale of renaissance power politics
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 27, 2016
    After the exile of Piero the Useless in 1494 it became increasingly difficult for the Medici clan to find suitable male heirs upon which to build their Florentine power base, and by the early 16th century the de facto head of the family Giovanni de' Medici was taken away from Florence when he became Pope Leo X. All Leo had to play with back home was a couple of Medici bastards with tenuous lines of succession to Lorenzo the Magnificent's legacy, namely Ippolito and Alessandro. Though Alessandro is one of the lesser-known Medici rulers of Florence, he's certainly one of the most interesting, not least for the fact that his ethnicity was at least part black African, a first among European rulers. Sex, violence, intrigue, his story has it all, and while as narrative histories go this is quite a potboiler, it is to the author's credit that she does not over-egg the luridness of the tale. The story of the rivalry between the cousins Ippolito and Alessandro is fascinating (though both were pawns in a bigger game at the end of the day), and Fletcher's portrayal of Alessandro (to whose name has become attached a reputation for cruelness and debauchery) is nothing if not fair. Of particular interest is the treatment of Alessandro's ethnicity, and the reflection that attitudes toward race in 16th century Italy were entirely unlike those of modern times.

    I chose this book because I fancied something a bit racy for poolside reading while on holiday but didn't want to go full Jackie Collins, and I wasn't disappointed. Highly recommended.
  • James P. Monson
    4.0 out of 5 stars Book arrived!
    Reviewed in Germany on June 9, 2020
    The book arrived safely this morning. Thank you very much.
  • Amazon Customer
    5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing rollercoaster ride on the Medici family train.
    Reviewed in Canada on October 22, 2021
    You Cant put id down once you start reading it. These poeople and their Greed for power and wealth defined the 15th and 16the century Europe and thus the world...slave trade, the Church..almost no institutions escaped the influence of this family.