Two Renaissance Book Collectors: Jean Grolier and Diego Hurtado de Mendoza (Lyell Lectures in Bibliography)

Two Renaissance Book Collectors is an illustrated study of the lives and works of Jean Grolier and Diego Hurtado de Mendoza. Jean Grolier, one of four Treasurers of France, is the most famous of all patrons of bookbinding, and has been described as the `Prince of Bibliophiles'. This volume contains the first full account of his life since 1866. It shows that his date of birth has been miscalculated by ten years, explains why he commissioned no bindings for five years in the 1530s, and includes a list of his bindings classified by workshop. Grolier's younger contemporary, the Spanish diplomat Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, was a greater scholar and reader than Grolier, though not so great a bibliophile. He formed a celebrated collection of Greek manuscripts while ambassador in Venice from 1540 to 1546, and was proficient in Latin, Italian, and possibly Arabic, in addition to his knowledge of Greek. He wrote poetry in Spanish and his history of the Morisco revolt is one of the classics of Spanish literature. Two Renaissance Book Collectors prints an unpublished catalogue of his Greek manuscripts and a catalogue of his library of printed books. A description of the bindings he commissioned as an ambassador is also provided, and leads on to an account of Venetian bookbinding in the sixteenth century. Both Grolier and Hurtado de Mendoza spent a number of years in Italy in their youth and were deeply influenced by Italian taste and culture.