Known as Valentino's executioner, he and Cesare Borgia were thought to be close friends since childhood, going on to accompany one another during their studies at the University of Pisa.

[4] With his lances, on his way to Pesaro, Corella heard of the insurgence of the rebelling Fossombrone and Pergola, and ventured to those towns to sack them pitilessly as punishment.

In November 1503, Corella and della Volpe went north with seven hundred horsemen to support Cesare's Romagnuoli but the group were defeated in Tuscany by the army of Gianpaolo Baglioni.

[8] The Italian-English novelist and historian Rafael Sabatini described Micheletto Corella as follows: "Corella was a captain of foot, a soldier of fortune, who from the earliest days of Cesare's military career had followed the duke's fortunes – the very man who is alleged to have strangled Alfonso of Aragon by Cesare's orders.

He is generally assumed to have been a Spaniard, and is commonly designated as Micheletto, or Don Miguel; but Alvisi supposes him, from his name of Corella, to have been a Venetian, and he tells us that by his fidelity to Cesare and the implicit manner in which he executed his master's orders, he earned – as is notorious – considerable hatred".