Checkmate! Capturing Kings and Batting Balls: Medieval People at Play is at The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland, through October 10.

We are all familiar with praying monks, but playing monks? A Book of Hours from Flanders finds them deep in a game of blind man’s bluff, while on the opposite page, peasant boys enjoy a rigorous game of hockey. Such delightful images of play are surprisingly ubiquitous in medieval manuscripts. Neither stodgy nor perpetually pious, medieval people found time for amusement in the margins of their lives and their manuscripts. From peasant boys shirking their winter duties in order to lob snowballs at each other to monkeys gleefully dancing to “Ring around the Rosie,” their antics have come down to us in art. This exhibit explores a sense of whimsy and fun that is uniquely medieval yet remarkably relevant to us today.