He left his native city around 1414 CE in order to travel, mainly in the Aegean Islands. He visited Constantinople in the 1420s. He is the author of two historical-geographic works: the "Descriptio insulae Cretae" (1417, in collaboration with Niccolò Niccoli) and the "Liber insularum Archipelagi" (1420). These two books are a combination of geographical information and contemporary charts and sailing directions. The last one contains the oldest surviving map of Constantinople, and the only one which antedates the Ottoman conquest of the city in 1453.