Ferrante Francesco d'Ávalos),[1] (11 November 1489 – 3 December 1525), was an Italian (Neapolitan) condottiero and nobleman of Spanish (Aragonese) origin.

[2][3] Fernando was born at Naples, but his family was of Aragonese origin, having arrived in southern Italy with Alfonso V's general Íñigo Dávalos, his grandfather.

His position as a noble of the Aragonese party in Naples made it incumbent on him to support Ferdinand the Catholic in his Italian wars.

Thanks to the intervention of one of the foremost French generals, the Italian G. G. Trivulzio, who was his connection by marriage, he was allowed to ransom himself for 6,000 ducats.

But in these meetings, he gained the confidence of Charles V. His Spanish descent and sympathies marked him out as a safer commander of the imperial troops in Italy than a "full" Italian could have been.

D'Ávalos' plan was remarkable for its audacity and for the skill he showed in destroying the superior French heavy cavalry by assailing them in the flank with a mixed force of harquebusiers and light horse.

It was believed that he was dissatisfied with the treatment he had received from the emperor, and Girolamo Morone, secretary to Francesco II Sforza, duke of Milan, approached him with a scheme for expelling French, Spaniards and Germans alike from Italy, and for gaining a throne for himself.

The Italian historiographer Paolo Giovio published a contemporary biography in Latin of Fernando Francesco which was included in his Vitae (illustrium virorum).