Sebastiano Serlio

Claude III de Laubespine had a predilection for Italian imprints and books of architecture. The center-and-cornerpiece gilt-blocked design of this binding is also an Italian import, a style practiced in Venice and then adopted in Paris by Grolier’s Last Binder, among
others. Grolier commissioned at least twenty-three bindings from this workshop, and Laubespine carried on with about forty. After his library was dispersed, this binding passed through the hands of at least five eminent collectors. The list begins with the statesman and art patron Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1619–1683) and Charles Henry, Count Hoym (1694–1736), whose gilt cipher was inserted in the center cartouche in the early eighteenth century.