 Bessarion’s reputation as a Platonist—mainly associated with his struggle against the arch-Aristotelian George of Trebizond—has at times obscured in modern scholarship his contribution to the Peripatetic tradition. By contrast, Bessarion’s Aristotelian expertise was widely recognized in the centuries after his death, when his translation of the Metaphysics was celebrated and reprinted several times, including in Bekker’s Corpus Aristotelicum (1831). Undertaken between 1446 and 1451 and dedicated to King Alfonso I of Naples, the translation was praised by Nicholas of Cusa for its excellence, and by Giannozzo Manetti for its clarity, which he attributed to the Cardinal’s decision to render the text ad sensum, rather than ad verbum.