MARCILLAT, GUGLIELMO di PIETRO de. – Painter, born in France at the Château of La Châtre, near Marcillat, from which he derived his name, and died at Arezzo in 1529, according to Vasari, who was his pupil, at the age of sixty-two. As a Dominican monk he was in Rome around 1505, where he executed stained-glass windows for the Vatican Palace, destroyed during the sack of the city for the sake of extracting their lead.
There remain, however, from these earliest known works of the master, the stained-glass windows of the Bramantesque triforia of S. Maria del Popolo, with scenes from the life of Mary, still linked to the French tradition but profoundly influenced by the spatial and perspectival investigations of the Renaissance. These works “won him fame and renown and the comforts of life.” He also received official recognition and was appointed a canon of S. Agostino and prior of the Benedictine cloister of St-Mihiel. From 1515 to 1518 he worked in Cortona, where, among other works, the beautiful stained-glass window of the church of Calcinaio remains. After a brief stay in Rome he moved to Arezzo, where he remained continuously from 1522 until his death, continuing the series of stained-glass windows in the Cathedral, begun in Cortona and still in place, and undertaking the decoration of the vault, whose central nave was completed in 1525 and which comprises Stories of the Old Testament, the Virtues, and putti, with strong reminiscences of Michelangelo and Raphael. These are inferior in quality to the stained-glass windows, in which his talent as a colorist and his technical skill achieve astonishing results, in a marvelous harmony of architecture, space, figures, and color. In Arezzo he also worked for the churches of S. Francesco, S. Domenico, and the Annunziata; he sent works to S. Domenico in Perugia and to S. Agostino in Monte S. Savino.