Rutland Psalter, f. 87v: the archer and the pun
Rutland Psalter, England, about 1260, British Library, Add MS 62925, folio 87v. A hairy blue archer with a scowling orange face draws his bow at a pale, naked creature, and the arrow is aimed squarely at its rear end. The joke is also a pun: the artist tied the arrow to "conspectu" in the psalm text above, a word about seeing, so the word ends up doing the piercing. The Rutland Psalter's margins are its real claim to fame, and this is one of the cheekiest.
