maybe a decade younger, but their two books could not possibly be
more different. Ficino was a scholar specializing in Plato. Ficino wrote a book called De Vita (“On Life”), which is mostly
a diet book about things that scholars should eat to help them stay
healthy, have clear and rational thoughts, and live—as Ficino
says—in harmony with the stars. De Vita is on the one hand based on standard Galenic principles—
hot and cold food and humoral balance—but it also has an
admixture of astrology and magic, including what foods you can eat
to harness the unseen forces of the universe and how to avoid what
he considered the most dangerous disease of scholars: melancholy. An idea that underlies much of his thought is called the doctrine
of signatures, which basically means that the power of a given
substance will be revealed by its outward form—its shape or color.
It is for this reason that Ficino often recommends bright-colored
foods like saffron, golden-hued wines, or even gold. They have a
certain sympathetic affi nity with the Sun, which has the power of
light, knowledge, clarity, and understanding. Apart from many bizarre recipes, there is also a great deal of what
we would now call aromatherapy as well as all sorts of advice on
sleeping, sex, and when to work and rest. It is a very interesting
book, but it is not representative of mainstream dietary thought in
the least. Most Florentines, surprisingly, were still eating much the
same medieval diet.Messisbugo’s Cookbook
Banchetti by Cristoforo di Messisbugo was a cookbook that was
written to describe the banquets thrown in the court of Duke Ercole
d’Este in Ferrara. Messisbugo’s banquets are a perfect match for the
style of art fl ourishing at the time, called mannerism, which can be
described as a self-consciously elaborate and sophisticated style that
sought to venture beyond the balanced and rational compositions of
the Renaissance by depicting fi gures in twisted positions sometimes