Jean Grolier de Servières

Grolier was born in Lyon; he encouraged the belief that he was older than seems plausible given the marriage of his parents in 1485, resulting in 1479 often being given as his date of birth.

[3] In 1508 Jean Grolier was a secrétaire du roi ("secretary to the king" - a junior aide in today's terminology) who had to accompany Louis XII and his court around France.

In his second period in Milan he was at the centre of a humanistic literary circle, and met Aldus Manutius, printer of so many of his books, when he visited from Venice, probably in 1511.

[5] Grolier later represented the French monarchy in Italy, though claims in older works that he had a formal appointment as ambassador to the Papacy are mistaken.

Grolieri et Amicorum (Latin for "the property of Jean Grolier and his friends"),[9] early examples adding Lugdunensis ("of Lyon") after his name.

His first period in Italy already shows him taking an innovative interest in bookbinding, commissioning a series of "plaquette bindings" with large medal-like reliefs at the centre of the cover.

Previously this style had only been used for special presentation volumes, and Grolier was the first collector to apply it systematically to books for his own library, which he seems to have begun to do in 1510.