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The two erring cooks, dressed as maidservants, fall at the prince’s feet and beg forgiveness, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of the Parrot): Fourth Night

Unknown

1560

unspecified

From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art

Mughal Painting Renaissance Renaissance

Dominant colour

The two erring cooks, dressed as maidservants, fall at the prince’s feet and beg forgiveness, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of the 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 two men in women’s clothes kneeling before a king on a golden stool. The painting is from a book of parrot tales told to Emperor Akbar. The king’s cooks were sent to test a soldier’s wife, but she outsmarted them, shaved their heads, and made them dress as maids. The bright yellow background was added later, so the colors look uneven now. To see more stories like this, look up mughal india, court of akbar (reigned 1556–1605).

The story of this work

Overview

Seated on a fine stool in the center, the king is astonished to receive his two handsome cooks, whom he had sent to seduce his soldier’s faithful wife. After she trapped them and kept them prisoner for weeks until the arrival of the king, she shaved their heads and forced them to dress as female servants to shame them for testing her fidelity. Some folios in this manuscript were altered from their original compositions, creating discoloration in many areas. The yellow background was changed to lavender, the legs of the stool were shortened, and the king’s bolster lowered. The manuscript’s…