MARCILLAT, Guglielmo di Pietro de. — Painter, born in France at the Château of La Châtre, near Marcellat, from which he took his name, 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, and executed stained-glass windows for the Vatican Palace, which were destroyed during the sack of the city to extract the lead.
Instead, what remain of these first known works of the master are the stained-glass windows of the Bramantesque triforia of Santa Maria del Popolo, with scenes from the life of Mary, still tied to the French tradition but deeply influenced by the spatial and perspective research of the Renaissance. These works “brought him fame and renown and a comfortable life.” He also received official recognition and was appointed canon of Sant’Agostino and prior of the Benedictine cloister of St-Mihiel. From 1515 to 1518 he worked in Cortona, where, among other things, the beautiful stained-glass window of the church of the Calciniano remains. After a brief stay in Rome he moved to Arezzo, where he remained uninterruptedly from 1522 until his death, continuing the series of stained-glass windows for the Cathedral, already begun in Cortona and still in place, and undertaking the decoration of the vault, of which the central nave was completed in 1525 and which includes Stories from the Old Testament, the Virtues, and putti, with strong Michelangelesque and Raphaelite 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 wonderful harmony of architecture, space, figures, and color. At Arezzo he also worked for the churches of San Francesco, San Domenico, and the Annunciation; he sent works to San Domenico in Perugia and to Sant’Agostino in Monte San Savino.