[259]. Was this the road from Seravezza seawards which Michelangelo had begun? See Note on ‘Tuscan Marble Quarries,’ ante, p. [119]. Specimens of these Stazzema breccias are shown as C, D, on the Frontispiece.
[260]. Lat. Evonymus Europaeus. The only English example of the family is the spindle tree.
[261]. The Lemonnier editors say that this work is lost. Of course Vasari is speaking of the Old St. Peter’s, not the present structure.
[262]. Fra Damiano of Bergamo is mentioned by Vasari in his Life of Francesco Salviati (Opere, ed. Milanesi, VII).
[263]. Inlays of different coloured woods, forming what is known as tarsia work, and sometimes as marqueterie, compose an easily understood kind of decoration that has been practised especially in the East from time immemorial. There is however a special interest attaching to this work in the Italy of the fifteenth century, in that it was connected with the studies in perspective that had so potent an influence on the general artistic progress of the time. For some reason that is not clearly apparent the designs for this work often took the form of buildings and city views in perspective, and artists amused themselves in working out in this form problems in that indispensable science. The history of the craft is so instructive that it is worth a special Note, which the reader will find at the end of this ‘Introduction,’ postea, p. 303.
[264]. ‘The onyx marbles of Algeria, Mexico, and California (which are of the same nature as the Oriental alabasters) can be cut and ground sufficiently thin for window purposes’ (Mr W. Brindley in Transactions, R.I.B.A., 1887, p. 53). See also ante, p. [43].
[265]. The ‘occhi’ of Vasari correspond to the old-fashioned ‘bull’s-eyes’ which are still to be seen surviving in cottage windows. The ‘bull’s eye’ pane was the middle part of a sheet of so-called ‘crown’ glass where was attached the iron rod or tube with which the mass of molten glass was extracted from the furnace, before, by rotation of the rod, it was spread out into the form of a sheet. When the rod was ultimately detached a knob remained, and this part of the sheet was used for glazing as a cheap ‘waste product.’ In connection with the modern revival in domestic architecture, for which Mr Norman Shaw deserves a good deal of the credit, these rough panes have come again into fashion, and manufacturers make them specially and supply them at the price of an artistic luxury! In Vasari’s time they were evidently quite common, and we find numerous specimens represented in the pictures of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The bedroom of S. Ursula in Carpaccio’s picture at Venice; the cell of S. Jerome in Dürer’s engraving; the room in which van Eyck paints Arnolfini and his wife, those in which Jost Amman’s ‘Handworkers’ are busy, etc., etc., have casements glazed in this fashion, the knob, called in English ‘bullion,’ in French ‘boudine,’ in German ‘Butzen,’ being distinctly represented as in relief.
[266]. The ‘telajo di legno’ is a window frame of wood such as we are familiar with in modern days, only in olden times these were often made detachable and taken about from place to place when lords and ladies changed their domicile. When Julius II wanted Bramante to fill some windows of the Vatican with coloured glass, it was found that the French ambassador to the Papal court had brought a painted window in such a frame from his own country, and the sight of this led to the invitation to Rome of French artists in this material. See infra, Note 5.
[267]. See Note on ‘The Stained Glass Window’ at the close of this ‘Introduction,’ postea, p. 308.
[268]. 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.