Baptismal documents discovered in 2017 revealed that Pieri was born to Piero Pieri-Rossi, a descendent of Parma's nobility working as a guard of the Florence Customs House, and living in the neighborhood of San Jacopo sopr'Arno.
[1] He trained under Agnolo Bronzino before approaching Giorgio Vasari and enrolling at the Accademia del Diseno on 16 July 1564.
[1] In that year, he participated with many other young artists in the funeral of Michelangelo; works of art from that event remain in many Florentine galleries today.
His painting of Michelangelo beside Duke Cosimo de' Medici gained special praise from Vasari.
These allowed his identification as the artist of the Flagellation in the baptistry of Saint John's Co-Cathedral, Valletta; Holy Family with St. John sold at Christie's in 1996 and a similar work in the Civic Museum of Prato;[4][5] the altarpiece of Santa Maria della Neve in the Monastero delle Murate (faded following the 1966 flood of the Arno); and the Madonna in Glory on the main altar of Badia a Pacciana in Pistoia.