Italian sculptor, originally Pierfrancesco di Bartolomeo di Ser Piero da Vinci, nephew of Leonardo da Vinci. His brief life was characterized by a precocious and promising sculptural career. He began his apprenticeship in Baccio Bandinelli's Florence workshop when he was about 12 but transferred shortly afterwards to that of Niccolò Tribolo; at the time Tribolo was working on the monumental fountains for the gardens of the Medici villa at Castello, near Florence. Pierino's first works, which can be dated after 1544, are a series of putti so similar in style to Tribolo's as to cause frequent misattributions. Among them are the Putto with a Mask (Arezzo, Galleria e Museo Medievale e Moderna) made for a fountain; the Putti Holding a Coat of Arms (London, Victoria and Albert Museum); and two Putti with a Fish (London, Victoria and Albert Museum). In his last years he worked in Pisa, where he died in 1553. He executed in Pisa his group Samson and the Philistine (now in the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence), and a River God (now in the Louvre, Paris). //