Statue of Giovanni de Medici (Giovanni delle Bande Nere) by Bandinelli in the front Basilica of San Lorenzo, Florence
The Monument to Giovanni delle Bande Nere is an Italian Renaissance sculpture in marble, by Baccio Bandinelli and his workshop, now in Piazza San Lorenzo in Florence, Tuscany, Italy. The work took from 1540 to after 1560 to carve, and the base and statue, though always meant to be together, were only so placed in 1850.

The imposing Giovanni sits, somewhat uncomfortably, wearing a metallic cuirass on his torso. Without a helmet or army boots, he holds a baton of command on his knee. The plinth is almost more decorative with festoons and bucranium, and Doric columns at the corners. One bas-relief appears to show soldiers bringing booty and captives before a sitting ruler. Others depict the Medici coat of arms. The corners have doric pilaster-columns.

Lodovico de' Medici, also known as Giovanni delle Bande Nere (1498 – 1526) was an Italian condottiero. He is known for leading the Black Bands and serving valiantly in military combat under his third cousins, Pope Leo X and Pope Clement VII, in the War of Urbino and the War of the League of Cognac, respectively.

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.

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.
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