A teacher in Humanities, university professor and preceptor to the nobility, he had a lively and colourful career, moving frequently between states to avoid denunciation and imprisonment: he was successively at Turin, Milan, Pavia, Venice and Lucca, before becoming a religious exile in Switzerland, first at Lausanne and finally at Basel, where he settled.
He was famous and admired as a publisher and editor of works of theology and history, also for his own writings and teachings, and for the wide sphere of his friendships and correspondence with many of the most interesting reformists, protestants and heretics of his time, though his energetic influence was at times disruptive.
The imputation of antitrinitarianism is very doubtful.
Curio published under the Latin form of his name, but scholarship has adopted the Italian form.