He had enough imagination to be the close friend both of Lorenzo de' Medici and Savonarola.

Savonarola clothed his dead body in Dominican robes and made him posthumously one of the order which for some time before his death he had desired to join.

He died in 1494 at the early age of thirty-one, two years after Lorenzo.
Angelo Poliziano, known as Politian, was also a Renaissance scholar and also a friend of Lorenzo, and his companion, with Pico, at his death-bed; but although in precocity, brilliancy of gifts, and literary charm he may be classed with Pico, the comparison there ends, for he was a gross sensualist of mean exterior and capable of much pettiness.

He was tutor to Lorenzo's sons until their mother interfered, holding that his views were far too loose, but while in that capacity he taught also Michelangelo and put him upon the designing of his relief of the battle of the Lapithae and Centaurs.

At the time of Lorenzo and Giuliano's famous tournament in the Piazza of S.Croce, Poliziano wrote, as I have said, the descriptive allegorical poem which gave Botticelli ideas for his "Birth of Venus" and "Primavera".