He was born in Montepulciano on July 14, 1454.

The family name was Ambrogini, but from the Latinized name of his native town turned into Italian he constructed the title of Poliziano, by which he was afterward known.

At the age of ten he was sent to Florence, then governed by Lorenzo de Medici.

He studied under the famous Greeks Argyropoulos and Kallistos and the equally famous Italians, Landino and Ficino.[13] Gifted with precocious talent, he wrote at the age of sixteen, astonishing epigrams in Latin and Greek.

At seventeen he began to translate the "Iliad" into Latin hexameters, and his success with the second book attracted the attention of Lorenzo himself.