He had served as Venetian Procurator in Rome, and his brief reign was largely concerned with the end of the Second Turkish–Venetian War.

The process of his election as Doge resulted in a divisive split in the council, that resulted in bad feelings: in 1477 Antonio Feleto was imprisoned, then banished, for remarking in public that the Council of the Forty-One must have been hard-pressed to elect a cheesemonger Doge.

[2] He has a large monumental wall-tomb, generally agreed to be "the most lavish funerary monument of Renaissance Venice",[3] in the basilica of Santi Giovanni e Paolo, the usual burial-place of Doges, which was executed by Tullio Lombardo (1493),[4] though Andrea del Verrocchio competed for the commission.

However the portrait in the Frick Collection by Gentile Bellini, inscribed with his name, is now considered to be of his successor, Doge Giovanni Mocenigo.

He was interred in the Basilica di San Giovanni e Paolo, a traditional burial place of the doges.