Nothing at all is known of his origins, his teaching, or his early years; he is first recorded as working in Urbino in 1530, when he is mentioned in a notarial document describing attempts by a group of pottery workers, or interlaboratores artis figuli, to form an early trade union for the purpose of raising wages.

Over the five years following he produced a large body of work; each piece was signed in various manners, and was dated and marked as a product of Urbino.

The last documentary record of him comes in 1541, when he is known to have taken on two assistants; that year he also initialed a piece from the workshop of Francesco de Silvano.

The surviving pieces appear to be similar in nature, with the exception of the signatures, to most other maiolica ware produced in Urbino at the time.

Besides being a ceramicist, Xanto was also a poet; in the 1530s he wrote a sequence of sonnets in praise of Francesco Maria I della Rovere, then duke of Urbino.