ABSTRACT
In the summer of 1516, Leonardo da Vinci moved permanently to France. King Francis I invited the famous artist to become his ‘Paintere du Roy’.1 It was a lucrative and prestigious appointment. The position of Court Painter paid a generous pension of ‘1000 scudi per annum’. For health reasons, Leonardo needed better patronage. Entries in his private notebooks reveal that the famous artist had been ill with mild paralysis on the right side of his body. In France he was seeking better climes, financial security, and improved medical care. On arrival Leonardo adopted a new medical regimen to aid his recuperation. He copied down ‘a recipe for better physic’ that was in circulation at the fashionable centres of European medical education at Bologna, Padua, and Paris. Before long the regimen had crossed the English Channel and was being promoted by the medical fraternity of Tudor London too. Its translation advised courtiers:
This type of dietary advice was well known during the reign of King Henry VIII (1509-47). Contemporary accounts confirm that the monarch was fascinated by humanist learning and the latest early modern physic.3 But Leonardo’s cautious regimen was not for Henry. The English monarch loved all of the physical pleasures that the doggerel sonnet recommended a European courtier should avoid. The Venetian ambassador wrote in 1531 that the king:
Henry was, according to these diplomatic reports, renowned for his romantic nature and a ‘superabundance of nervous energy’.5 The Milanese ambassador, Paolo da Lodi, likewise reported of the young king that: ‘He is never still or quiet … He does wonders and leaps like a stag’ at dancing.6 Henry believed in vigorous exercise on the hunting field; he often jousted dangerously risking grave personal injury; and hawked despite his failing eyesight into old age.7 His appetite, like that of most noble families who celebrated being fatter as a sign of wealth, was nonetheless notable. Henry snacked between meals, ate huge portions and consumed rich ingredients. Accounts from the kitchens of the royal palaces show that Henry relished red meat. He could not have known the modern science of nutrition but he did physically experience how difficult a high-protein diet is to digest and hard for his blocked bowels to expel (unlike Leonardo, a famous vegetarian). In the Calendar of State Papers detailed
records survive of the food served to those that ate in the Privy Chamber. An entry in 1526, for example, attests that Henry personally ordered a ‘flesh day’ each week ‘frome Estir [Easter] untyll Mychellmes [Michalemas]’, and that when he brought his illegitimate son, Henry Fitzroy, duke of Richmond and Somerset, to court (around June 1525) he decreed his diet to be:
Ten portions of meat in two courses took their toll on the royal digestive system (despite the pudding fruit). Small wonder perhaps that Henry VIII’s suits of armour kept expanding in size. Those on display at the Tower of London today reveal his torso measurements:
In middle age the royal apothecaries were often summoned to cure the king’s painful constipation. Being overweight necessitated prolonged visits to the privy.9 Henry’s thirst was said to be ‘unquenchable’. Naturally he drank lots of red wine, since local water supplies were considered a health hazard, but then he needed to urinate frequently. At night he suffered restless sleeping patterns, cat-napping in the day to try to cure his insomnia. Taken
together, contemporary evidence strongly suggests that Henry was neither a perfectly balanced man, nor someone who followed strict medical advice. The handsome prince needed to adopt a healthier lifestyle before middle age slowed his metabolism. Instead Henry’s medical regimen was an idiosyncratic reflection of his changeable personality.10
