Nicolai Primi Pont. Maximi Epistolae.

Pope Nicolaus I.

Nicolai Primi Pont. Maximi Epistolae.

Rome

Francesco Priscianese

1542.

Jean Grolier employed several of the best Italian and French binders during his lifetime of book collecting. The binding on this edition of the letters of Pope Nicolaus I (ca. 800–867), one of the Grolier Club Library’s most valued possessions, is a beautiful example of the work of the so-called “Cupid’s Bow” binder, the Parisian binder or workshop that executed many of Grolier’s commissions in the late 1540s. The front cover bears Grolier’s generous bibliophile motto, “Io. Grolierii et amicorum” (“for the use of Jean Grolier and his friends”).

Purchased from the estate of Lucius Wilmerding, 1951.