Enlarge +

Francesco Patrizi (1413-1494). Enneas de regno, & regis institutione. Paris: Printed by Pierre Vidoue for Galliot du Pré, 1519. Purchased as the gift of Mrs. Livio Borghese and on the E. Clark Stillman Fund and the Henry S. Morgan Fund, 2011.

“Prince of Bibliophiles,” Jean Grolier (1479-1565) commissioned innovative gilt-tooled bindings for a personal library famed for the quality of its holdings. The Morgan has the largest collection of his books in America, with particular strengths at the beginning and the end of his collecting career. This binding fills a gap in the collection, a middle period ca. 1520 when he returned to France after holding the office of Treasurer-General in Milan. At that time he began to have books bound for him in the shop of Pierre Roffet, who may have learned about Italian styles of binding design under his tutelage. He inscribed this copy twice, with the et amicorum formula making it freely available for the use of his like-minded humanist colleagues.