[1] He was born in Verona, medieval Italy, and later studied Greek language and literature in Constantinople, at the time capital of the Byzantine Empire, where for five years he was the pupil of the renowned Byzantine Greek scholar, Renaissance humanist, and professor Manuel Chrysoloras.

[1][2] When he set out to return home, he had with him two cases of precious manuscripts of ancient Greek texts which he had taken great pains to collect.

On arriving back in Italy, he earned a living as a teacher of Greek, first in Verona and afterwards in Venice and Florence.

[3] His method of instruction was renowned and it attracted many students from Italy and the rest of medieval Europe as distant as the Kingdom of England.

His principal works are translations of Strabo and of some of the Lives of Plutarch, a compendium of the Greek grammar of Chrysoloras, and a series of commentaries on Persius, Martial, the Satires of Juvenal, and some of the writings of Aristotle and Cicero.