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In 1537, Alessandro de’ Medici, Duke of Florence, was brutally stabbed by his cousin Lorenzino. Here, for the first time in English, we can examine the murderer’s own defense of his actions in this jewel of Renaissance rhetoric. In this compelling diatribe, Lorenzino de’ Medici presents himself as worthy of comparison with some of the greatest heroes of classical Greece and Rome, purely motivated by love of liberty. His account, however, is generally assumed to be false, and Lorenzino’s reputation is that of a brutal, amoral thug, the antihero of Alfred de Musset’s drama Lorenzaccio. When the Medici regime was reinstated the same year as Alessandro’s murder, Lorenzino’s own assassination was ordered; here, dramatically paired with the Apology, is the fascinating account of Francesco Bibbone, Lorenzino’s own murderer. Florentine nobleman and dramatist Lorenzino de’ Medici is one of the most notorious figures of Renaissance Italy.