Sacred and secular: the Tring Tiles reveal the playful world of Chaucer's time

These hilarious, naive British artworks were made in the 14th century. They tell tales about the childhood of Christ in a raw comic strip using yellow figures with big eyes on a red background. The stories are not from the Gospels. They have a folkloric strangeness that is remote from the spirit of modern Christianity. Jesus smites dead his playmates who annoy him in scenes of divine power that are bizarre to modern eyes. Made from 1320 to 1330, these robust pictures reveal the world in which Chaucer told his Canterbury Tales. Illustration: British Museum