Here we see a portrait of the pope Julius II, who was pontiff between the 1503 and the 1513. Ten very intense years lived by this pope in the first person, a man who did many things, who was strongly criticized and loved, whose deeds tried to change the history of his time.

For example Julius II is usually remembered for the indelible traces of art that he generated thanks to his intense patronage: he was the one who asked to Michelangelo the frescos of the vault at the Sistine Chapel, the man who asked to Raphael to decorate his private rooms, the pope who ordered to Bramante to completely rebuilt the St Peter Basilica. So there is no doubt that Julius II, born Giuliano della Rovere, considered the role of the pontiff not only in a religious way, but also, and perhaps above all, as the undisputed leader of a sovereign state. But of course a state must have an army, people who must be ready to defend the interests of their leader. So it is not a case if at the 1506 Julius II called a group of mercenaries, a company of fortune coming from modern Switzerland, which still exists today under the name Swiss Guards. The modern swiss boys are simply the heirs of the first mercenaries called by Julius II in order to be helped during a war, men who became their bodyguards, in some degree. 

The Pope Julius II fought everywhere in Italy, even in old age,  personally accompanying the army. It is said that even if he was sick and weak, unable now to ride, and being carried away by a stretcher, he continued to criticized those soldiers that he believed were not ready or unsuitable for his army. He was a pope who fought alternately against Venice and then against France (probably his more hated enemy, so much to say that he, as a man always was a callow youth, he would not cut his beard until he had expelled all the French), changing alliances, and becoming one of the political and military actors of the political situation of the italian peninsula at the XVI century. Many other things could be added in order to understand this man, so tenacious and tough, who was nicknamed Terribile (terrible in italian), a man capable of losing a few votes in the conclave of 1492, in favour of Alessandro VI Borgia, which from then on, as well as the whole family, will become another on the enemy. Who knows why, however, in the next conclave, the cardinal Giuliano della Rovere managed to get himself elected pope in the course of the first ballot, receiving votes from the faction adverse to him.

A man of his time, in short, a powerful lover of the arts and connoisseur of cultural significance and policy that a certain patronage could convey. A man conscious of not being able to do, in the competitive italian peninsula of the Renaissance, often passing over the prerogatives of the strictly papal and spiritual, to achieve his goals...