Bust of Giuliano de' Medici in the Bargello, Florence
Giuliano de' Medici, murdered in Florence cathedral on 26 April 1478. The terracotta bust in the Bargello is attributed, not securely, to Matteo del Pollaiolo. The Pazzi conspiracy that killed him was a quarrel between banking houses before it was anything else.
The attack on the Medici brothers during high mass was mounted by the Pazzi, a rival Florentine banking family, with the backing of Sixtus IV — a pope who had moved the papal account away from the Medici bank after Lorenzo refused him a loan. Giuliano was killed; Lorenzo escaped and the Medici hold on Florence tightened rather than broke. The episode is a reminder of what a fifteenth-century bank actually was: a family, a political faction and a network of correspondents, in which losing the curial account was worth killing over. See the rise of the Medici bank.
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