Like Lucretia, Giulia had golden hair, and her beauty won for her the name La Bella.

It was in Adriana's house that this tender, lovely child became ensnared in the coils of the libertine Rodrigo.

She succumbed to his seductions either shortly before or soon after her marriage to the young Orsini.

Perhaps she first aroused the passion of the cardinal, a man at that time fifty-eight years old, when she stood before him in his palace a bride in the full bloom of youth.
Be that as it may, it is certain that two years after her marriage Giulia was the cardinal's acknowledged mistress.

When Madonna Adriana discovered the liason she winked at it, and was an accessory to the shame of her daughter-in-law.