ABSTRACT European powers – mainly Spanish and Italian – took the figure of Alfonso the Magnanimous, King of Aragon (1416–1458), into great consideration as the example of the new modern prince. His image was highly valued in sixteenth and seventeenth-century historical texts like those of Jerónimo de Zurita (1512–1580), Giovanni Antonio Summonte (d.u.–1602) and Luigi Bonincontro (d.u.). Their concept of this sovereign and their admiration for his character are largely due to the success of his representative programme. Given his link to the Neapolitan throne and his contact with Quattrocento Italy, the Magnanimous used an image discourse designed to represent him before his contemporaries and before posterity as a principe nuovo: Caesarean, virtuous and humanist. Among the component pieces of this programme, the works that his aulic humanists Lorenzo Valla (1407–1457), Bartolomeo Facio (1400–1457) and Antonio Beccadelli (1394–1471) dedicated to him stand out, with the latter's work being the one that raised up the sovereign as the exemplum of the new princeps. This paper focuses on how Beccadelli’s work generated the concept of the Magnanimous in modern Spain and modern Italy, especially through the Alphonsi Regis dicta aut facta memoratu digna, which, since the second half of the fifteenth century and before Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527) – mainly his The Prince and its inspiration Cesare Borgia (1475–1507) Alfonso the Magnanimous became a true exemplum principum for the modern era.