Italian Renaissance Murder Mystery of Pico Mirandola and Poliziano

Pico Mirandola is considered to be the founder of philosophical humanism, a trend that proposed that man has the choice to do and be whatever he wants. Poliziano was a poet whose Italian writings were elevated alongside with Greek and Latin writings. He was tutor to the Medici children, and he also documented the death of Giuliano de' Medici in the famous Pazzi conspiracy of 1478.

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According to Silvano Vinceti, head of Italy's National Committee for the Valuation of Historical and Cultural and Environmental Assets, Marsilio Ficino, close friend and leader of the Neoplatonist movement, was implicated in a recent hypothesis in the deaths.

After Pico Mirandola's death, Girolamo Savonarola, a Dominican priest of the period who detested homosexuality, orated in a sermon that Pico Mirandola would not go to heaven.  Their exhumed bodies of Pico Mirandola and Poliziano have been taken to Ravenna where they will undergo forensic tests to determine the true causes of death. The results are expected in September.

Brenda Harness, Art Historian

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