The daughter-in-law returns from her misadventure, feigning insanity, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Sixteenth Night
1560
unspecified
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
1560
unspecified
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
The daughter-in-law returns from her misadventure, feigning insanity, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Sixteenth Night is a 1560 unspecified by Unknown, a Mughal Painting work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
A woman with wild hair and torn clothes kneels before a king. She’s barefoot, no jewelry, pretending to be mad. The king sits on a carpet, watching. Above them, women peek from a balcony, shocked. This painting tells a story from a 16th-century Indian book called the *Tuti-nama*. The woman is lying—she ran off with a lover and now has to hide it. The artist shows her acting crazy, but the real drama is in the faces of the people watching. To see more paintings like this, look up Mughal India, court of Akbar (reigned 1556–1605).
After a failed love affair, the daughter-in-law of the king of Banaras returns home to her husband. Her disheveled hair and lack of jewelry support her claims of insanity and hide the evidence of her true whereabouts. The woman is greeted by the king, who sits with one of his attendants. In the chambers above them, a group of women look on in surprise.
An arm visible beneath the central chamber indicates that a smaller figure has been overpainted.
Read the full account in the museum source.
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