This is a page from an Antiphoner. This book contained the choral parts for the cycle of Offices celebrated by a monastic or other community. Its size enabled the whole choir to read the music at once. The initial O is historiated (that is, with a figurative picture, istoire being the term for a story). It shows God the Father enthroned with a Crucifix and a dove. The dove represents the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Trinity. Around the borders of the page are animals and grotesque figures. From the last decades of the 13th century, it was common for the ornament that framed the text to be inhabited by regiments of grotesque figures. These were half-man and half-beast. They were depicted alongside animals and birds that were realistically represented. Interspersed among the birds and animals were dragons' bodies and grotesque faces. Occasionally, there is a link between the grotesques and the text, but often there seems little more than incongruous romping.

This choirbook was made for a community of Dominican friars, and thus a very scholarly one. In the border, a monkey is catching a bird with a rope; at his feet a cage encloses another bird.