Born in Verona, he was the son of the artist Giovanni Ermano Ligozzi, and part of a large family of painters and artisans.

Upon the death of Giorgio Vasari in 1574, he became head of the Accademia e Compagnia delle Arti del Disegno, the officially patronized guild of artists, which was often called to advise on diverse projects.

[1] He was named director of the grand-ducal Galleria dei Lavori, a workshop providing designs for artworks made mainly for export: embroidered textiles and for the newly popular medium of pietre dure, mosaics of semiprecious stones and colored marbles.

He also painted a canvas of St. Raymond resuscitating a Child for Santa Maria Novella and Martyrdom of St. Dorothea for the church of the Conventuali at Pescia.

Ligozzi was commissioned to create some of the depictions found in the encyclopedic visual catalogue of the plant collections of Bolognese Ulisse Aldrovandi (kept in the Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe of the Uffizi Gallery).