Rodrigo Borgia was elected Pope on August 11, 1492 and retained the papacy until his death in 1503. He most likely bribed his way into gaining the papacy. His elevation in status allowed him to elevate his illegitmate children as well. The most famous of these children being Juan, Cesare, and Lucrezia. Juan was murdered shortly after his father became Pope - probably because of a sexual liasion with the wrong woman. It is Cesare and Lucrezia who have perhaps received the most infamous reputations over history.

The Awakening Conscience was painted by William Holman Hunt in 1853 and depicts a man and his mistress with the mistress in the middle of a revelation and rising toward redemption. The painting is also full of symbolism and includes such things as a man's glove on the floor which symbolizes the fate of a cast-off mistress was likely to be prostitution, and a tangled mess of yarn on the floor that symbolizes the tangled life and situation the girl has gotten herself into.