At first glance, it looks like a profound moment in medieval history, stunningly captured in the finest pigment and gold leaf.
But if you look closer, this lavish illustration from an 800-year-old book actually shows one of the first fart jokes printed in Britain.
The throwaway scene shows a fictional creature called a bonnacon unleashing his “secret weapon”: a powerful and “surprising” form of flatulence.
While being stabbed with a spear, the angry beast expels acid gas and feces from its anus as a form of defense against two knights.
The comic drawing appears in the Aberdeen Bestiary, a medieval manuscript preserved at the University of Aberdeen that once belonged to King Henry VIII.
In the illustration, the fictional bonnacon expels acidic feces from its anus as a form of defense against two knights.
The image has been rediscovered by satirist and Private Eye editor Ian Hislop in his search for Britain’s first jokes for a new podcast.
Hislop contacted Professor Jane Geddes of the School of Divinity, History, Philosophy and Art History at the University of Aberdeen, an expert on the Aberdeen Bestiary.
“This image from the Aberdeen Bestiary is particularly explicit,” Professor Geddes told MailOnline.
‘All the other animals in the book really have a certain moral, so you have to be thrifty and hardworking.
‘But bonnacon has no moral whatsoever: it just shits, that’s what it does.
“It’s automatically fun for anyone ages four and up.
“There are certain basic things that we still find funny and one of them is poop.”
What makes it more fun, says Professor Geddes, is that the illustration is covered in gold leaf.
“It’s glittering gold, it’s an exquisite miniature painting, and then there’s the poop.”
The full page of the Aberdeen Bestiary, a medieval manuscript kept at the University of Aberdeen that belonged to King Henry VIII.
Other illustrations in the book include the deceitful gentleman who steals a cub from a mother tiger.
What’s more, one of the knights has just impaled the beast with a spear, so the act of emptying its potent entrails is perhaps his final act of revenge.
Other illustrations in the book include a deceitful gentleman who steals a cub from a mother tiger.
As he escapes with the cub and is examined by the mother on horseback, the knight throws a reflective glass sphere.
The tigress is fooled by her own image in the glass and believes it is her stolen cub.
There are also scenes of lions and panthers, elephants, dogs and goats, as well as fictional creatures such as the basilisk and the scitalis snake.
Bestiaries were illustrated books of animals, some real and others mythological, used to convey Christian moral messages.
They were popular in the 12th and 13th centuries, but few were produced in such profusion as the Aberdeen version, which has been in the care of the university for almost four centuries.
The Aberdeen Bestiary, created in England around 1200 and first documented in the Royal Library at the Palace of Westminster in 1542, is one of the best surviving examples of a medieval illuminated manuscript.
At some point it entered the library of English royal collections, probably selected by Henry VIII’s explorers during the Dissolution of the Monasteries sometime between 1536 and 1541.
Known as the Aberdeen Bestiary, the book was created in 1200 and features animal stories to demonstrate key beliefs of the time.
The Aberdeen Bestiary is one of the most luxurious ever produced, probably created for the enjoyment of many. In the photo, a basilisk attacked by a weasel.
It has been in the care of the University of Aberdeen since 1625, when Thomas Reid, former regent of the college and founder of the first public reference library in Scotland, bequeathed it to the university’s Marischal College.
Only recently have historians found hidden handwritten notes and dirty thumb marks from the Tudor era in the book’s margins.
The book is thought to have been used more likely for teaching than for the royal elite, according to Professor Geddes.
“On many of the words there are small markings that would have provided a guide to correct pronunciation when the book was read aloud,” he said.
“This shows that the book was designed for an audience, probably teachers and students, and used to provide a Christian moral message through Latin words and striking illustrations.”
New podcast, ‘Ian Hislop’s Oldest Jokes’, is available available to listen to on BBC Sounds.