Giuliano Medici

Giuliano is a dashing bon vivant who enjoys the spoils of his position while letting his older brother shoulder the burdens of leadership. Initially, Giuliano expresses a dislike for da Vinci that stems from envy and because da Vinci exposes Giuliano’s insecurity from not being taken seriously.

Da Vinci is everything Giuliano is not – brilliant and unbound by social convention. Plus, he has Lorenzo’s favor, which is something Giuliano has always craved. But his crude jealousy also gives him one advantage over da Vinci. He’s not blinded by da Vinci’s dazzling genius, as most people are. In his own, simplistic way, Giuliano senses something that Lorenzo, Lucrezia and others do not - that da Vinci’s real allegiance is to his quest for knowledge and his mother. What Giuliano rightly intuits is that when those things come into conflict, Florence will always lose out.

Played by Tom Bateman