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The lover’s son makes an elephant of the pastry dough carried by the unfaithful wife and puts it in her basket, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Eighth Night

Unknown

1560

unspecified

From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art

Mughal Painting Renaissance Renaissance

Dominant colour

The lover’s son makes an elephant of the pastry dough carried by the unfaithful wife and puts it in her basket, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Eighth Night is a 1560 unspecified by Unknown, a Mughal Painting work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.

Who painted this?: Unknown
When & what style?: 1560 · Mughal Painting
Where can I see it?: Cleveland Museum of Art

About this work

You see a woman in a long red dress walking away, basket of food on her head. A boy kneads dough from the basket into a tiny elephant shape while two adults kiss behind a bush. This painting comes from a book of parrot tales told to Emperor Akbar. The stories were meant to teach lessons—here, about trust and consequences. The boy’s playful elephant is a quiet clue that something’s wrong. To see more paintings like this, look up Mughal India, court of Akbar (reigned 1556–1605).

The story of this work

Overview

On her way to bring a meal to her husband, a woman encountered a man who offered her money for sex. They embrace and go off to a sheltered place, leaving his son with the food basket. Bored with waiting for them, he fashions a pastry from the woman’s basket into the shape of an elephant.