Histoires prodigieuses
Pierre Boaistuau, France, 1560
Pierre Boaistuau was a popular French author who intended to
dedicate this, his last and most famous work, to the new queen of
England, Elizabeth I. He crossed the Channel in late 1559 armed
with this presentation manuscript. We do not know what the Queen
thought of the book, a collection of myths and stories about
prodigies and freaks of nature. The following year the manuscript
was used as the exemplar for the first edition of the published
work that was printed in Paris in June 1560 with woodcut
illustrations.
This picture, showing an unnamed king who was so fat that he
employed leeches to suck out his excess fat, was used by Boaistuau
to illustrate a long chapter on notorious gluttons and
drunkards.