doi:10.1016/j.eururo.2007.10.068


Editorial

Red Wine, Sex, and a Genius

Riccardo Bartoletti *, Nicola Mondaini, Tommaso Cai

Department of Clinical Care Medicine and Surgery, University of Florence, S. Maria Annunziata Hospital Urological Unit, Florence, Italy

e u r o p e a n u r o l o g y 5 3 ( 2 0 0 8 ) 2 3 1 – 2 3 3

a v a i l a b l e a t w w w . s c i e n c e d i r e c t . c o m

j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w . e u r o p e a n u r o l o g y . c o m
Regular, moderate consumption of red wine is
linked to a reduced risk of coronary heart disease
and to lower overall mortality. The same protective
effects on the whole vascular system could be
hypothesized for erectile dysfunction if considered
as the ‘‘tip of the iceberg’’ of a systemic vascular
disorder [1]. Nevertheless, the relative contribution
of alcohol and polyphenol components in wine to
these effects is unclear [2]. Red wine polyphenols
induce endothelium-dependent dilatation of blood
vessels through the nitric oxide (NO) system,
increasing the expression of endothelial NO
synthase and suppressing the synthesis of endothe-
lin-1, which is a peptide with a consistent vasocon-
strictive effect [3,4].

NO from nerves and possibly from endothelia
plays a crucial role in initiating and maintaining
intracavernous pressure increase, penile vasodila-
tion, and penile erection that are dependent on
cyclic guanosine monophosphate synthesized with
activation of soluble guanylyl cyclase in smooth
muscle cells [5]. However, consensus is lacking on
the protective effects of the moderate consumption
of red wine, which may interact with the NO system,
as a result of not only alcohol but also the presence
of polyphenolic flavonoids [6].

The effect of wine on sex life was recently the
theme of a special 1-d congress in Leonardo’s home
town, Vinci.

In a keynote address Carlo Pedretti, Director of the
Armand Hammer Center of Leonardo Studies at
UCLA and its Italian division at the University of
Urbino, focused his discussion on a stunning black-
chalk drawing clearly inspired by an Angel of the
* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: riccardo.bartoletti@unifi.it (R. Bartoletti).

0302-2838/$ – see back matter # 2007 European Association of Urology. Publis
Annunciation but showing the bold image of a young
Bacchus or Dionysus with an obtrusive erection
(Fig. 1).

The aspects regarding wine and sexuality have
been well known since the time of ancient Greece
when a legend told of the birth of wine as one of
Dionysus’s tears. For the Romans Dionysus became
Bacchus, the god of wine and fertility. From the
marriage of Bacchus and Venus, Priapus was born.

Pedretti’s paper placed great emphasis on the
complexities of much new evidence of Leonardo’s
bisexuality, also viewed with reference to Leonar-
do’s ideas about the effect of wine and drugs on the
working of one’s mind and body. This offered a
different image of Leonardo’s own character, indeed
of his inner life, which now appears so well in
keeping with the spirit of his time and with echoes
even in that masterpiece of the French Renaissance,
François Rabelais’s Gargantua and Pantagruel, which
is a thorough and lively account of the role and
importance of wine by a humanist who was also a
physician.

The Leonardo drawing, which was discovered in
Germany in 1990 and which is the core of his
argument, deserves special attention.

From 1993 to 2000 this drawing toured the world,
from Europe to America and from South Africa to
Asia, with the travelling exhibition Leonardo Scientist,
Inventor, Artist, which started with three locations in
Sweden: Malmö, Stockholm, and Goteburg.

Presented for the first time in New York on
March 23, 1991, on the occasion of a congress of
art historians and psychoanalysts organized by
New York University, it was then the object of
hed by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.eururo.2007.10.068

mailto:riccardo.bartoletti@unifi.it
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.eururo.2007.10.068


Fig. 1 – Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), The ‘‘Angel in the

Flesh’’ (Bacchus with an erection), c. 1513–1515. Black

chalk or charcoal on rough, blue paper, 268 T 197 mm.

German private property, in trust of The Pedretti

Foundation, Los Angeles, CA, USA.

e u r o p e a n u r o l o g y 5 3 ( 2 0 0 8 ) 2 3 1 – 2 3 3232
considerations and evaluations on the part of
specialists in both disciplines, not only as an
exceptional document of Leonardo’s complex psyche
but also as a problem of attribution and therefore of
style. Its suspected provenance from the Royal
Collection at Windsor Castle in the 19th century
was to be confirmed by the English art critic Brian
Sewell in The Sunday Telegraph of April 5, 1992: ‘‘It was
well known that the Royal Collection had once
contained a number of pornographic drawings by
Leonardo. I remember being fascinated by the story
when I worked for a while in the Royal Library. The
whole episode had passed into the mythology of the
place. According to the version I heard, a large man in
a Sherlock Holmes cape had arrived one day to have a
look at the drawings. He was reputed to be a very
eminent German scholar. It was not until some time
later that the drawings were found to have been
stolen [. . .] There is no doubt that the drawings were a
considerable embarrassment, and I think everyone
was very relieved to find that they’d gone.’’ According
to Sewell, recent scholars who knew of the fact but
never mentioned it in their publications included
Anthony Blunt and Lord Kenneth Clark.

As for the attribution to Leonardo of the newly
discovered sheet, aside from the indisputable
authenticity of the writing on the reverse, it was
immediately considered as a working hypothesis
both in terms of an unquestionable conception by
the Master with his direct participation in a pupil’s
work, and as an autograph work of perplexing
quality that could only be explained by psycho-
analysis.

School versions of a lost painting by Leonardo of
an Angel of the Annunciation are known, as is a
student drawing on a sheet of Leonardo’s studies
for the Battle of Anghiari of about 1505. The angel
was to be seen from the front until just below the
waist line and as a result its sex was partially
hidden in the painted versions. In the present
drawing this is indeed spelled out. The angelic
smile is transformed into a faun-like grin. The
pointing hand is merely sketched. The hand raised
to the breast and holding a veil over the erect penis
is elaborated in considerably greater detail. The
female breasts turn the angel’s body into that of a
hermaphrodite.

On the back of the sheet Leonardo wrote three
Greek words also in black chalk and in his
characteristic left-handed script: astrapen, bronten,
ceraunobolian. They are taken from Pliny’s account of
Apelle’s legendary feat of depicting precisely that
which cannot be depicted, such as the atmospheric
phenomena referred to by those words, namely,
lightning, storms, and thunderbolts.

Style, handwriting, as well as blue paper and
technique, all indicate the period during which
Leonardo devoted his energies to a series of Deluge
drawings now at Windsor and dating from around
1515 or later. The same type of blue paper is found in
an anatomy manuscript at Windsor from 1513 or
later. A pen and ink profile of a young man of
comparable features is found on a sheet of almost
identical size (258 � 198 mm) in that manuscript.

Recent research has shown a possible source for
Leonardo’s bold idea of the Angel in the Flesh. This is
Antonio Pucci’s Historia della bella reina d’oriente, a
14th century poem certainly known to Leonardo
since he quotes from it an octave about a grotesque
giant. A few octaves before one comes across
the erotic scene of the young monarch who had
just been transformed by divine intervention from
a beautiful girl into an exuberant young man. To
the wife wondering about his exceptional male
attribute, he explains how it was given to him by the
angel Gabriel:



Fig. 2 – Leonardo’s Bacchus in Cesariano’s edition of

Vitruvius (Como, 1521). Detail.

e u r o p e a n u r o l o g y 5 3 ( 2 0 0 8 ) 2 3 1 – 2 3 3 233
Having tasted that cock she said:

‘‘My love, where did you get this?’’.

And he replied: ‘‘Gabriel the Angel,

As God willed, made it out to me’’.
‘‘No wonder that’s so good and beautiful’’,

She said, ‘‘if that’s where it comes from!’’.
And so the gesture of the pointing hand
indicating a divine disposition (‘‘as God willed’’)
acquires in this drawing an even more compelling
significance. Leonardo does indeed belong to a
popular tradition of open and sharp frankness in
dealing with scurrilous themes even in a religious
context. This is shown by such contemporary
works as the Geta e Biria and the Manganello that he
owned.

A humanistic attitude toward erotic imagery
inspired by the Antique could well be recognized
in Cesare Cesariano’s rendering of Leonardo’s
famous Vitruvian Man as published in his 1521 edi-
tion of Vitruvius (Fig. 2). In a recently discovered
document, Cesariano mentions Leonardo as his
own teacher. No surprise then that the youth in his
illustration should reproduce Leonardo’s Angel in
the Flesh as a young Bacchus, including not only
the penis in full erection but also the facial
features framed by luxuriant, wavy hair that
barely conceals a crown of vine leaves.

In conclusion, the link between wine and sex was
established in art and history at least 500 yr ago and
nowadays the link is intriguing in terms of evaluat-
ing the quality of life of patients with erectile
dysfunction.
References

[1] Montorsi P, Montorsi F, Schulman CC. Is erectile dysfunc-

tion the ‘‘tip of the iceberg’’ of a systemic vascular dis-

order? Eur Urol 2003;44:352–4.

[2] Corder R, Mullen W, Khan NQ, et al. Red wine procyani-

dins and vascular health. Nature 2006;444:566.

[3] Hashimoto M, Kim S, Eto M, et al. Effect of acute intake of

red wine on flow-mediated vasodilatation of the brachial

artery. Am J Cardiol 2001;88:1457–60.

[4] Corder R, Douthwaite JA, Lees DM, et al. Endothelin-1

synthesis reduced by red wine. Nature 2001;414:

863–4.

[5] Toda N, Ayajiki K, Okamura T. Nitric oxide and penile

erection function. Pharmacol Ther 2005;106:233–66.

[6] Leslie SJ, Atkins G, Oliver JJ, Webb DJ. No adverse hemo-

dynamic interaction between sildenafil and red wine. Clin

Pharmacol Ther 2004;76:365–70.