Note 268 — Chapter XVIII · (XXXII.)

Vasari wrote the life of this artist, who had been his own teacher in early years at Arezzo (Opere, IV, 417). Gaye, Carteggio, II, 449, gives documentary evidence that he was the son of a certain Pierre de Marcillat, and was born at S. Michel in the diocese of Verdun in France. His name therefore has nothing to do with Marseilles, which moreover is not in a glass-painting locality, whereas Verdun, between France and Germany, is just in the region where the art was developed and flourished. Guglielmo and another Frenchman named Claude came to Rome about 1508 in the circumstances described in the foregoing Note, and made some windows for the Sala Regia of the Vatican and other parts of the Palace. These have all perished, but there still survive two windows from their hands in the choir of S. Maria del Popolo, on which are the name and arms of Pope Julius II. They are placed north and south behind and above the high altar, and have each three lights. They contain scenes from the lives of Christ and the Madonna, in which the figures are carefully drawn but the colour is patchy. Though the reds are clear and strong, there is a good deal of grey and the architectural backgrounds are rather muddy in hue. The artist was invited from Rome to Cortona and from thence to Arezzo, which as Vasari notices in the beginning of his Life remained his home to the end. He executed many windows there, in the cathedral and in S. Francesco, some of which still remain; and also works in fresco. Vasari declares that he owed to his teaching the first principles of art.

On the whole subject of the glass-painting craft see the Note on ‘The Stained Glass Window,’ postea, p. 308, where the curious confusion of two different processes, between which Vasari’s treatment oscillates, is elucidated.