(b Terranova, Tuscany, 11 February 1380; d Florence, 30 October 1459).
Italian scholar, collector and writer.
After notarial training in Florence, during which he came under the influence of the humanist Chancellor Coluccio Salutati (1331–1406), Poggio worked as a papal bureaucrat from 1404 to 1453, with intermissions including a period in England (1418–23); he then became Florentine Chancellor himself (1453–6). The earlier part of his life was marked by discoveries of Latin texts hitherto unknown, including works of Lucretius, speeches of Cicero, Vitruvius’ On Architecture and the complete works of Quintilian. He later issued histories and treatises on moral, social and scholarly questions.
M. C. Davies