Ludovico di Giovanni de’ Medici, Giovanni dalle Bande Nere

Ludovico de’ Medici, also known as Giovanni dalle Bande Nere (6 April 1498 – 30 November 1526) was an Italian condottiero. He is known for leading the Black Bands and serving valiantly in military combat under his relatives, Pope Leo X and Pope Clement VII, in the War of Urbino and the War of the League of Cognac, respectively.

Giovanni was born in the Northern Italian town of Forlì to Giovanni de’ Medici il Popolano and Caterina Sforza, one of the most famous women of the Italian Renaissance. From an early age, he demonstrated great interest and ability in physical activity, especially the martial arts of the age, such as horse riding and sword-fighting. He committed his first murder at the age of 12,[citation needed] and was twice banished from the city of Florence for his unruly behavior, including involvement in the rape of a sixteen-year-old boy, Giovanni being about thirteen at the time. He had a son, Cosimo (1519–1574), who went on to become the Grand Duke of Tuscany.

On the evening of 25 November he was hit by a shot from a falconet in a battle near Governolo. According to a contemporary account by Luigi Guicciardini, the ball shattered his right leg above the knee and he had to be carried to San Nicolò Po, near Bagnolo San Vito, where no doctor could be found. He was taken to Aloisio Gonzaga’s palace, marquis of Castel Goffredo, in Mantua, where the surgeon Abramo, who had cared for him two years earlier, amputated his leg. To perform the operation Abramo asked for 10 men to hold down the stricken condottiero.

Pietro Aretino, eyewitness to the event, recalled in a letter to Francesco Albizi:

‘Not even twenty’ Giovanni said smiling ‘could hold me’, and he took a candle in his hand, so that he could make light onto himself, I ran away, and shutting my ears I heard only two voices, and then calling, and when I reached him he told me: ‘I am healed’, and turning all around he greatly rejoiced.

Despite the surgery Giovanni de’ Medici died five days later, supposedly of sepsis, on 30 November 1526.

Giovanni’s body was exhumed in 2012 along with that of his wife to preserve the remains, which were damaged in the 1966 flood of the Arno river, and to ascertain the cause of his death. Preliminary investigation revealed that his leg was amputated below the knee. No damage was found to the thigh, where the shot supposedly hit. The tibia and fibula, the bones of the lower leg, were found sawed off from the amputation. There was no damage to the femur. It is now thought that de’ Medici may have died of gangrene.