X-Nico

unusual facts about Leo X



Basilica of San Lorenzo, Florence

The Medici Pope Leo X gave Michelangelo the commission to design a façade in white Carrara marble in 1518.

Francesco Soderini

He was complicit in the plot of fellow Cardinals Bandinello Sauli and Alfonso Petrucci against Leo X for the benefit of Cardinal Riario; he went into voluntary exile in 1517, returning to Rome in 1521.

Il Sodoma

When Leo X became pope (1513), Sodoma presented him with a picture of the Death of Lucretia (or of Cleopatra, according to some accounts).

Renaissance Papacy

Although Adrian VI said mass every day for the year he was pope, there is no evidence that his two predecessors—Julius II and Leo X—ever celebrated mass at all.


see also

Bernardo Dovizi

Leo X repaid such services by presenting him with a purple robe, appointing him his treasurer and entrusting him with many important missions, among them the command of the Papal army in the War of Urbino (1517) and a legation to France (1518).

Borghese Petrucci

Leo X, unable to occupy the territories directly, facilitated a coup on 8 March 1516, by Raffaello Petrucci, Bishop of Grosseto and lord of Castel S. Angelo.

Villa Madama

In the garden facing the loggia, the Elephant Fountain, designed by Giovanni da Udine, commemorates the Indian elephant "Annone", brought to Rome by a Portuguese ambassador for the consecration of Leo X in 1514.