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The son of the king of Babylon sees the Brahman transformed into a woman bathing and falls in love with her, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Thirty-fifth Night

Unknown

1560

unspecified

From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art

Mughal Painting Renaissance Renaissance Nude

Dominant colour

The son of the king of Babylon sees the Brahman transformed into a woman bathing and falls in love with her, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Thirty-fifth 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

A prince watches a woman bathe in a palace pool, while a princess gasps beside him. The woman is really a Brahmin—a Hindu priest—who used magic to live as a woman with the princess. This painting comes from a book of parrot tales told to Emperor Akbar. The bright colors and tiny details show how Mughal artists mixed Persian and Indian styles. The story itself is full of trickery and secret love. To see more paintings like this, look up Mughal India, court of Akbar (reigned 1556–1605).

The story of this work

Overview

One day the king’s son caught sight of a woman washing her hair and fell in love with her. She was actually a Brahmin, a Hindu priest, who had a magic pearl of transformation that allowed him to live in the women’s quarters with his lover, the princess. The princess gestures in alarm, as she realizes her brother has fallen for her lover. Another popular subject that we see in the Tuti-Nama and in later painting is women bathing in a pool. Women bathing also appear in Krishna sporting with the gopis , from the early Bhagavata Purana , CMA 1971.171 . Note how the Mughal handling of water with…