Girolamo Benivieni

Girolamo Benivieni was a Florentine poet and a musician. His father was a notary in Florence. He suffered poor health most of his life, which prevented him from taking a more stable job. He was a leading member of the Medicean Academy, a society devoted to literary study. He was a friend of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–1494), whom he met for the first time in 1479; it was Pico della Mirandola who encouraged him to study Neoplatonism. In the late 1480s, he and Pico della Mirandola became students of Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola (1452–1498). In 1496, he translated the teachings of Savonarola from Italian to Latin. After he began following Savonarola, he rejected his earlier poetry and attempted to write more spiritually. He participated in Savonarola's Bonfire of the Vanities, and documented the destruction of art worth "several thousand ducats".