Giuliano

Giuliano was only a mediocre Medici. In any other family he might have been superb. But the Medicis were a flamboyant line, running to both seraphic and sulphurous extremes. Giuliano's father was Lorenzo the Magnificent, mighty patron of the arts and writer of bawdy ditties, a politically high-minded ruler whose actions were tyrannous. Giuliano's brother was Pope Leo X, a dilettante and politician who palely reflected his father's glories. Giuliano himself had the aquiline features and dark locks of his tribe. But he did not have the spouting energy. He met and married Princess Philiberta of Savoy, aunt of Francis I.

In 1512 the French-supported Florentine republic, extant since 1494, fell before the Spanish-supported Medici. Giuliano acquired the title of Gonfaloniere of the Papal Forces. He was the ruler of the so-called republic. He played host at gala fetes and mingled with men of genius. But he was still a mediocre Medici, displaying no creative gifts, governmental or artistic. He died in 1516, when only 37.

But Giuliano did one thing to insure his immortality. Once, while visiting his brother the Pope, he donned a gold hair net, black biretta, grey-green and furry cloak, scarlet vest. In this attire he climbed to an upper chamber of the Vatican palace (through a window could be seen the squat turret of Castle St. Angelo), and there sat for the popular painter, Raphael Sanzio. Raphael was then in his prime, his original talents reinforced by much critical study of Masaccio, da Vinci, Michelangelo, Bartolommeo. He painted Giuliano with the grace and color befitting even a mediocre Medici.

This painting was sold, last week, by Sir Joseph Duveen to Manhattan Banker Jules Semon Bache for $600,000.* It had been owned by Florentines, Russians, Roman royalty, and had been missing for a period of 300 years. In 1925 Sir Joseph bought it from Oscar Huldschinksy, a Berlin collector. Banker Bache will not hang it in a serried gallery, but in his Fifth Avenue home. There, as private decoration, are three Titians, three Rembrandts, four Holbeins, a Hals, a Watteau, a Fragonard, and many another picture of rank. The collection is among the finest in the U. S.

*The 1928 record price for a painting was $750,000, paid by a U. S. syndicate for Raphael's Madonna di Siena.'