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Page from Tales of a Parrot (Tuti-nama): text page

Unknown

1559

unspecified

From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art

Mughal Painting Renaissance Renaissance Allegory Mughal Court

Dominant colour

Page from Tales of a Parrot (Tuti-nama): text page is a 1559 unspecified by Unknown, a Mughal Painting work, depicting Mughal Court, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.

Who painted this?: Unknown
When & what style?: 1559 · Mughal Painting
Where can I see it?: Cleveland Museum of Art

About this work

You see a page from a book: black Persian script curls around a small painting of a woman and a parrot in a courtyard. This is one of 250 hand-painted pages from a 16th-century Indian storybook. The parrot tells tales to keep the woman from sneaking out to meet her lover. The artist made the courtyard feel deep, like you could step into it. Look up more paintings of the Mughal court.

The story of this work

Overview

Many of the illustrations from the latter portion of the book reveal more confidence in naturalistic spatial renderings. The space of the courtyard, roof, bedroom niche, and the dimensionality of the parrot’s perch are all more convincing than those of the Fifteenth Night on the wall to the left. On this night the parrot is telling Khujasta that he is worried about whether or not her lover is of noble ancestry. She asked him how she could find out his true lineage. The parrot answered that he would eventually betray himself by his speech or behavior, if he were of low breeding. He then told…

Read the full account in the museum source.