Kamjuy, the wife of the Raja, averts her face from the fishes, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Twenty-third Night (c. 1560): Art, History and Details

Kamjuy, the wife of the Raja, averts her face from the fishes, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Twenty-third Night (c. 1560) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

On the left Kamjuy, chief of the Raja’s forty wives, turns away from the bowl of fish and hides her face behind her veil. She claims that it would be sinful to allow any male, even a fish, to see her. To the astonishment of both the Raja and Kamjuy herself, the fish immediately begin to laugh at her assertion.

Object facts

• Title: Kamjuy, the wife of the Raja, averts her face from the fishes, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Twenty-third Night
• Date: c. 1560
• Culture: Mughal India, court of Akbar (reigned 1556–1605)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: gum tempera, ink, and gold on paper
• Dimensions: Overall: 20.3 x 14 cm (8 x 5 1/2 in.); Painting only: 11.5 x 10.1 cm (4 1/2 x 4 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1962.279.163.a

A detail from the museum

Kamjuy and the Raja touch their index fingers to their mouths in gestures of surprise.

Collection credit

Gift of Mrs. A. Dean Perry

Further reading listed by the museum

• Seyller, John. “Overpainting in the Cleveland T̤ūtīnāma.” Artibus Asiae 52, no. 3/4 (1992): 283-318.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.