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The mendicant’s wife deceives him with a soldier, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Fourth Night

Unknown

1560

unspecified

From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art

Mughal Painting Renaissance Renaissance Allegory

Dominant colour

The mendicant’s wife deceives him with a soldier, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Fourth 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 red dress sitting under a tree, laughing with a soldier while her husband, turned into an elephant, eats leaves in the background. This painting comes from a book of stories told by a parrot to keep its owner from sneaking out at night. The elephant-husband thinks he’s outsmarting fate, but the story says no trick can stop human nature. The bright colors and flat shapes feel like a comic strip from 1560s India. To see more paintings like this, look up court of Akbar (reigned 1556–1605).

The story of this work

Overview

According to this story, written in Persian, a skilled yogi in India reached such a high level of practice that he was able to perform acts of transformation. Anxious to prevent his wife from committing adultery, he transformed himself into an elephant and carried her hidden in a howdah on his back and stayed only in the deep forest, away from men. One day, when the elephant was out foraging for food, a lone soldier came upon the wife, and they made love. The moral of the story is that no matter how extreme the lengths to which one might go to prevent adultery, if someone is inclined to do…