Marcillat, Guglielmo di Pietro de

MARCILLAT, GUGLIELMO di PIETRO de. - Painter, b. in France at the Castle of La Châtre, near Marcillat, from which he derived his name, d. 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, and executed stained-glass windows for the Vatican Palace, which were destroyed during the sack of the city in order to extract their lead.

There remain, however, of these first 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 tied to the French tradition but profoundly influenced by the spatial and perspectival investigations of the Renaissance. These works "won him fame and name and the comforts of life." He also received official recognition and was appointed canon of S. Agostino and prior of the Benedictine cloister of St-Mihiel. From 1515 to 1518 he worked at Cortona, where there remains among other things the beautiful stained-glass window of the church of the Calcinaio. 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 of the Cathedral, already begun at Cortona and still in situ, and undertaking the decoration of the vault, of which the central nave was completed in 1525 and which comprises Stories of the Old Testament, the Virtues and the putti, with strong Michelangelesque and Raphaelesque reminiscences, inferior in quality to the stained-glass windows in which his talent as a colorist and his technical skill achieve surprising results, in a admirable harmony of architecture, space, figures and color. At Arezzo he also worked for the churches of S. Francesco, S. Domenico and dell'Annunziata: he sent works to S. Domenico of Perugia and to S. Agostino in Monte S. Savino.

Eugenio Battuti