The earliest trace that we find of Piero as a painter is in 1439, when he was an apprentice of Domenico Veneziano, and assisted him in painting the chapel of S. Egidio, in S. Maria Novella of Florence. Towards 1450 he is said to have been with the same artist in Loreto; nothing of his, however, can now be identified in that locality. In 1451 he was by himself, painting in Rimini, where a fresco still remains. Prior to this he had executed some extensive frescoes in the Vatican; but these were destroyed when Raphael undertook on the same walls the "Liberation of St Peter" and other paintings. His most extensive extant series of frescoes is in the choir of S. Francesco in Arezzo,--the "History of the Cross," beginning with legendary subjects of the death and burial of Adam, and going on to the entry of Heraclius into Jerusalem after the overthrow of Chosroes. This series is, in relation to its period, remarkable for effect, movement, and mastery of the nude. The subject of the "Vision of Constantine" is particularly vigorous in chiaroscuro; and a preparatory design of the same composition was so highly effective that it used to be ascribed to Giorgione, and might even (according to one authority) have passed for the handiwork of Correggio or of Rembrandt. A noted fresco in Borgo San Sepolcro, the "Resurrection," may be later than this series; it is preserved in the Palazzo de' Conservatori. An important painting of the "Flagellation of Christ," in the cathedral of Urbino, is later still, probably towards 1470. Piero appears to have been much in his native town of Borgo San Sepolcro from about 1445, and more especially after 1454, when he finished the series in Arezzo. He grew rich there, and there he died, and in October 1492 was buried.