[1] Filippo was born in Lucca in imperial Italy in the 1390s to Giovanni of the Quartigiani family.
With the fall of the Republic of Lucca and the rise of Paolo Guinigi, his family was forced into exile.
They went to Venice, where there was a large community of expatriate Luccans supported by organs like the Scuola dei Santo Volto.
According to an appeal he lodged on 8 December 1444, his grandfather Nicolò and his great-grandfather Giovanni had also suffered exile for the sake of Luccan liberty.
In Ragusa he wrote his most famous work, Situs aedificiorum, politiae et laudabilium consuetudinum inclytae civitatis Ragusii ad ipsius Senatum descriptio, a description of the city in fifty chapters dedicated to the senate, which probably commissioned it.