Carlo de' Medici

Carlo di Cosimo de' Medici (1428 or 1430 – May 29, 1492) was an Italian priest. A member of the powerful Medici family, he became a senior clergyman and collector.

Born at Florence, he was the illegitimate son of Cosimo de' Medici (the Elder) and a slave-woman named Maddalena, who was said to have been purchased in Venice. It is widely accepted that Maddalena was a Circassian, as hinted by Carlo's "intense blue eyes" and other "marked Circassian features" as well. However, it has been once suggested that his mother might have been a black African, only because of the apparently dusky features depicted in Mantegna's portrait of Carlo. Yet, he has blue eyes in the same portrait, and is depicted with standard Italian skin-pigmentation in a painting by Filippo Lippi.

His father forced him to take on a religious life. After becoming canon of the cathedral at Florence in 1450, he was appointed rector of Pieve di Santa Maria (Dicomano) in Mugello and the Pieve of San Donato di Calenzano.

He became Abbot of San Salvatore at Vaiano, outside Prato. He was also Papal tax collector and nuncio in Tuscany. Carlo was dean of Prato as early as 1460. A cultured man, he collected medallions. He died in Florence in 1492.

Depiction of Carlo in Filippo Lippi's Funeral of St. Stephen

Carlo was portrayed by Andrea Mantegna in a head-and-shoulders portrait wearing clerical garb in 1466. He also appears in the funeral scene of Filippo Lippi's Stories of St. Stephen and St. John the Baptist in the Prato Cathedral, in which he is depicted standing behind the Pope. He may also be portrayed as one of the figures in Benozzo Gozzoli's paintings of the journey of the Magi in the Magi Chapel in Florence.

In the historical fantasy series Da Vinci's Demons, Carlo was played by actor Ray Fearon. He is depicted as a missionary who the cruelty of the world has made him doubt the Church and its message.