text: Later years and death After the death in April 1453 of his intimate friend Carlo Aretino, who had been the Chancellor of the Florentine Republic, the choice of his replacement, mostly dictated by Cosimo de' Medici, fell upon Poggio. He resolved to retire from his service of 50 years in the Chancery of Rome, and returned to Florence to assume this new function. This coincided with the news of the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans.
  Poggio's declining days were spent in the discharge of his prestigious Florentine office—glamorous at first, but soon turned irksome—conducting his intense quarrel with Lorenzo Valla, editing his correspondence for publication, and in the composition of his history of Florence. He died in 1459 before he could put the final polish to his work, and was buried in the church of Santa Croce. A statue by Donatello and a portrait by Antonio del Pollaiuolo remain to commemorate a citizen who chiefly for his services to humanistic literature deserved the notice of posterity. During his life, Poggio kept acquiring properties around Florence and invested in the city enterprises with the Medici bank. At his death, his gross assets amounted to 8,500 florins, with only 137 families in Florence owning more capital. His wife, five sons and daughter all survived him.