Palazzo Vecchio, Florence's town hall and former seat of Medici power, holds portraiture connected to Alessandro de' Medici (1510-1537), 'il Moro,' the first hereditary Duke of Florence and, per most contemporary accounts, the son of a servant identified as Simonetta da Collevecchio -- described by contemporaries and later scholars as a formerly enslaved African woman -- and either Lorenzo de' Medici, Duke of Urbino, or Cardinal Giulio de' Medici (later Pope Clement VII). Alessandro ruled Florence from 1530 until his assassination in 1537. Historians dispute the certainty of his mother's African origin -- some contemporary and modern sources trace her instead to the Roman countryside -- but the claim was widely reported in his own lifetime and is treated by many historians of the Renaissance-era African presence in Europe as substantively documented.