Born to a wealthy family, he gained entry to the Great Council of Venice at the age of twenty, five years younger than was normal at the time.

He dedicated himself to editing classical Latin manuscripts at the Aldine Press printing office, garnering a reputation as a scholar and a skilled writer.

He was imprisoned by Charles in December 1526, but released in a prisoner exchange the following April; before returning home to Venice, he traveled to Paris to acquaint himself with the royal court of Francis.

By the time Navagero arrived back in Venice in September 1528, he had grown disillusioned with politics and wished to return to editing manuscripts and cultivating his prized gardens.

[15][9] Although members of Venice's noble families were automatically granted a seat in the Great Council at the age of 25, it was possible to gain early admission through a yearly lottery among the younger noblemen.

[20][21] Despite his election to the Great Council, Navagero devoted much of his time to editing manuscripts of classical Latin works at the Aldine Press printing office, garnering a reputation as a scholar and a skilled writer.

[1][11][15] With the Aldine Press, he published editions of the works of the ancient Roman writers Cicero, Quintilian, and Virgil in 1514, Lucretius in 1515, Ovid in 1515 and 1516,[4] and Terence in 1517.

[25] In one instance, he cast some of his own poems into a fire after a reader compared them to Statius's Silvae, a work written in a "Silver Age" Latin style that Navagero personally disliked.

As a result, the Venetian Senate designated Navagero both the manager of the collection and the official historian of the Republic, granting him a considerably large salary of 200 ducats a year.

They found lodging at the home of the author and diplomat Baldassare Castiglione and frequently toured the city; it was during such an excursion that Raphael depicted the two travelers in his 1516 work Portrait of Andrea Navagero and Agostino Beazzano.

[30] Following his return to Venice, Navagero was confronted by the challenge of organizing Bessarion's massive collection of valuable codices, which had been improperly stored in damp conditions since 1468.

[40] Priuli returned to Venice, as had been previously planned, while Navagero settled in Toledo, supplying highly detailed descriptions of the city to Ramusio[41] and translating Decades of the New World, written by his newfound friend Peter Martyr d'Anghiera, into Italian.

[43] In return, Charles demanded control of Burgundy and northern Italy; France acquiesced, ending the negotiations and allowing the royal court to move to Seville, a development which pleased Navagero.

[45] While in Seville, he was also tasked with gathering information on commerce between Spain and the New World by the Venetian Senate; he later provided these details to Ramusio, who included them in his compendium Navigationi et Viaggi.

[49] He also described to Ramusio the surrounding ruins, homes, gardens, and inhabitants, as well as the valley of the Darro and its fruit, which he labelled "the most delicious in the world".

Navagero and the rest of the diplomats stayed in Paredes de Nava during this time, attempting to calm tensions after the outbreak of the War of the League of Cognac earlier in 1526.

His ambassadorship in Spain during the diplomatically volatile period was lauded, though he later revealed to Ramusio that he had become disillusioned with politics and strongly desired to leave the field.

[59] Much to his dismay, he was named the ambassador to France in January 1529 after failing to obtain employment as a riformatore dello studio di Padova, one of the three Venetian officials responsible for the University of Padua.

[5][62] Prior to his death, he ordered the creation of a tomb for himself in the Church of San Martino di Murano near Venice[62] and the destruction of all of his incomplete works.

[27][65] Navagero's Italian translation of Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo's Natural and General History of the Indies was found after his death and published by Ramusio in Venice.

[71] E. J. Kenney, the Kennedy Professor of Latin, referred to Navagero as "an excellent Latinist, and Ovid's most competent editor before Heinsius" in his book published in 1974.

[73] The brothers Gaetano [it] and Giovanni Antonio Volpi republished the Lusus in 1718 alongside Navagero's edition of Ovid, two of his funeral orations, and four literary letters.

Aldus Manutius, the founder of the Aldine Press, noted his "sharp mind" and "sure judgment" and compared his skill in writing to that of "the great authors of antiquity".

[7] His votive epigrams, which the 16th-century historian Paolo Giovio described as having a "tender and very sweetly primitive grace", were frequently imitated by vernacular poets in both Italy and France,[79] such as Pierre de Ronsard.

[81] In 1965, W. Leonard Grant described Navagero as "one of the most elegant Latin poets of the Italian Renaissance and one of the very few important Neo-Latin writers produced by Venice",[27] while in 1992 the art historian John Shearman deemed him "the best of the many imitators of the classical epigrams".