I really like the appearance of these two little grotesque figures. They appear in profile in the Washington Haggadah. I also like David Stern’s comment about them. “[T]he grotesques sometimes appear, almost partially hidden, inside the large colored panels that mark the major sections of the haggadah…[They] play a game of hide-and-seek with the reader. At first we do not notice them, but when we do, they take us by surprise, making us look ever harder at a text we thought was utterly familiar” (The Washington Haggadah: A Fifteenth Century Manuscript from Library of Congress, p.30). The grotesques lend a strange animation to what one might have thought is a simple story about redemption. Or perhaps, considered art historically, they are probably innocent, even conventional, and really mean nothing beyond their capacity to amuse. It’s probably best not to over-read the hide-and-seek of these decorative figures