Romance of Alexander, f. 21v: dancers in animal masks

Romance of Alexander, decorated in Tournai and completed in 1344 by the Flemish illuminator Jehan de Grise and his workshop, Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS. Bodl. 264, folio 21v. Along the foot of the page a musician strikes up and a line of dancers joins hands, several of them wearing stag, hare and long-snouted animal heads. It reads like a snapshot of masked holiday dancing, tucked under a story of Alexander the Great, and the masks are more unsettling the longer you look.