A little wonder, every day

What we know about Leonardo’s diet

photograph of Andrea Corsali’s letter to Giuliano de’ Medici, a contemporary copy made around 1516. Original page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Andrea_Corsali,_letter_to_Giuliano_de_Medici,_1516.jpg. Creator: State Library of New South Wales. The file page reports permission confirmed by the Wikimedia VRT team and a CC BY-SA 3.0 Australia license; credit State Library of New South Wales. No edits.

presumed self-portrait of Leonardo da Vinci. Original page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Leonardo_da_Vinci_-_presumed_self-portrait_-_WGA12798.jpg. Creator: Leonardo da Vinci (attribution as titled); faithful reproduction of a public-domain two-dimensional work, marked Public Domain Mark 1.0 on the file page. No edits.

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photograph of Andrea Corsali’s letter to Giuliano de’ Medici, a contemporary copy made around 1516. Original page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Andrea_Corsali,_letter_to_Giuliano_de_Medici,_1516.jpg. Creator: State Library of New South Wales. The file page reports permission confirmed by the Wikimedia VRT team and a CC BY-SA 3.0 Australia license; credit State Library of New South Wales. No edits.

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In a 1515 letter from India, the traveler Andrea Corsali described a people who ate no food containing blood and added, “like our Leonardo da Vinci.” This shows that a contemporary associated Leonardo with avoiding meat, but it does not prove that the artist always followed a vegetarian diet; no clear statement by Leonardo himself about this is known.