Perino was one of Ghirlandaio's most talented pupils. Another mediocre painter, Vaga from Toscanella, undertook to settle the boy in Rome. Perino, when he at last reached Rome, was utterly poor, and with no clear prospect beyond journey-work for trading decorators. He was eventually entrusted with some of the subordinate work undertaken by Raphael in the Vatican. He assisted Giovanni da Udine in the stucco and arabesque decorations of the Loggie Vaticane, and executed some of those small but finely composed scriptural subjects which go by the name of Raphael's Bible, Raphael himself furnishing the designs.