Andrea Carafa, born in Naples, was a condottiere and feudal lord from the Carafa family. Offering large sums of money to King Ferdinand II of Aragon in 1496, Andrea was made count of Santa Severina, taking possession of it and the surrounding lands. He fought in 1502 under service to King Frederick I of Naples in the war against the French, and also needed to fight the inhabitants of the lands that he had claimed in 1496 in order to assert his rule. When the Viceroy of Naples, Charles de Lannoy, left the kingdom in 1523, Andrea became Lieutenant General of the Kingdom of Naples. Andrea Carafa died in 1526 in Naples.

The reverse design and inscription is an allusion to what is reputed to be one of Carafa's favorite quotations from Juvenal's Satires (X, 356): "Nullum numen habes, si sit prudentia" (You do not need any god if there is prudence). The artist attribution is based on the similarity of this medal to that of Jacopo Sannazaro by Santacroce, both stylistically and in terms of fabric (both medals possess concave fields).