In August 1500, Andrea Orsini, an artistic minor nobleman who is equally skilled with the brush, the sword, words, and women, serves the Machiavellian Prince Cesare Borgia as a soldier.

He meets the lovely Camilla di Baglione, young wife of the elderly Count Marc Antonio Varano of Citta del Monte, and smitten with her, gallantly gives her a painting he was haggling to sell for a hundred ducats.

Resuming the mission, Andrea stops to visit the farm of a blacksmith's widow, reputed to be hiding gold stolen by her bandit son.

Andrea's next mission, again chosen over Don Esteban, is as ambassador to Citta del Monte, with orders to help Borgia conquer the mountaintop city by spring, using a romantic conquest of Camilla to facilitate a "correct" elimination of the elderly count.

Belli is delighted because it would make it easy to kill the count, but Andrea is moved by the older man's wisdom and love for his people.

However, Belli has secretly remained loyal to Andrea and fakes the disfigurement, and Mother Zoppo takes her son home.

After Borgia moves on to another campaign, Andrea and Belli plot to free the imprisoned Camilla and help the people retake their city.

Belli aids Andrea in entering the castle to rescue Camilla, but the signal for the citizen uprising is given before they can make their escape.

[12] Bosley Crowther in his December 24, 1949, review for The New York Times, praised the film's “stately magnificence, so far as settings and costumes are concerned, and of unbounded generosity in bringing the Italian Renaissance to popular view … one vivid sequence representing an assault on a hill town by the armies of Cesare Borgia, done with horrendous graphicness, and a brief but beautiful duel on a real palazzo's stairway at the end.”—all “superbly photographed,” but missing “the believable breath of life and the sense of momentum and excitement that a story of the Renaissance should have”.

“Except for the last fifteen minutes … it is a peculiarly prolix and static succession of beautiful scenes, full of inflated conversation, in which dramatic action rarely shows… Henry King has directed … performances that have the grand manner but little vitality.

Everett Sloane, too, does his darndest to get in some broad licks now and then as a renegade and assassin… both …may definitely be counted as assets …Wanda Hendrix.. is much too juvenile and sallow... Orson Welles' eager performance of Cesare Borgia, whom they called "The Bull," is remarkably appropriate to that distinctive soubriquet…and Katina Paxinou does nicely in two scenes as Mr.

But what it really needed was a stronger script.“[13] The Santa Cruz Sentinel published an Associated Press capsule review by Bob Thomas on December 13, 1949: “ “Prince of Foxes" is above-average swashbuckling stuff.