Ridolfo (sometimes Rodolfo) II da Varano, signore di Camerino (flourishing 1344 — 1384), was a condottiero operating in Italy from the 1360s.
His forebears had long held[1] the rocca of Varano on the borderland of the Papal States, controlling a major strategic pass between Umbria and the Marche, a link between Rome and the Adriatic coast.
In 1362 he fought for the Florentines against Pisa, notably in the capture of Peccioli, where he succeeded Bonifazio Lupo, to whom Matteo, the continuator of Giovanni Villani's chronicle, compared him, as "nobler in birth, but much inferior in swiftness and mind"[6] a lack of initiative: "He remained sleeping mornings until the third hour, in a bed supplied with low company and leading a quiet, courtly life>"[7] In 1370 he victoriously warred for Florence against Bernabò Visconti.
In 1375 Ridolfo held Bologna, until recently occupied by papal troops under a legate, for the appointed emergency Florentine magistracy, the Otto di Guardia ("Eight of War").
For this the Florentines had him depicted on the facade of a public building, in a defaming portrait, "traitor to the Holy Mother Church, to the popolo and commune of Florence and to all its allies," as hanging by his left foot, upside down on a gallows, with a siren on his left and a basilisk on his right while wearing a bishop's mitre (circa 13 October 1377),[9] His rise as papal commander was however halted when, due to strife with Albornoz, the latter had him imprisoned.