an eminent Italian painter, born of poor parents in Tuscany, about the year 1500. He was placed apprentice with a grocer in Florence, and got some instructions from the painters to whom he was sent with colours and pencils; but a painter named Vaga taking him to Rome, he was called Del Vaga, from living with him, his real name being Buonaccorsi. He studied anatomy with the sciences necessary for his profession; and had somewhat of every thing that was good in his compositions. After Raphael's death, he joined with Julio Romano and Francisco Penni to finish the works in the Vatican which were left imperfect by their common master; and to confirm their friendship married Penni's sister. He gained the highest reputation by his performances in the palace of Prince Doria at Genoa; but the multiplicity of his business, and the vivacity of his imagination, drained his spirits in the flower of his age; for he died in the year 1547. Of all Raphael's disciples, Pierino kept the character of his master longest, i.e. his exterior character and manner of designing; for he fell very short of the fineness of Raphael's thinking. He had a particular genius for the decoration of places according to their customs. His invention in that kind of painting was fully of ingenuity; grace and order are everywhere to be met with, and his dispositions, which are ordinary in his pictures, are wonderful in his ornaments: some of these he has made little, and some great, and placed them both with so much art, that they set off one another by comparison and contrast. His figures are disposed and designed according to Raphael's taste; and if Raphael gave him at first some slight sketches of ornaments, as he did to Giovanni d'Udine, he executed them to admiration. The tapestries of the seven planets, in seven pieces, which Pierino designed for Diana de Poitiers, and which were, when De Piles wrote, with Monsieur the first president at Paris, show sufficiently what he was, and that the above character does not exceed the truth.