NHM: terracotta monkey

Dun dun DAAAAA: a NatHist non-HDR image! Better enlarged.

I love these little terracotta monkeys: they climb the arches in various poses and each wears a slightly different expression, but this one in particular has something very real and captivating about it. It is on the arch that rises up over the stairs leading from the first to the second floor of the main hall, as seen at the lower left of this blip. (It is the monkey in line with the base of the balustrade on the left, and I took the photograph from the open archway to the left of it.)
There was a bright, orangy spotlight just below me casting quite dramatic light; the bluer light on the stairs is the natural light coming in through the roof windows.

I like this particular monkey because it looks so genuinely startled; it looks, to me, like a monkey that was petrified (or ceramicised?), perhaps by the proximity of the photographer watching it climb the arch...