Lovers and beloveds: A composite of scenes from Persian, Urdu, and Sanskrit literature (c. 1735): Art, History and Details

Lovers and beloveds: A composite of scenes from Persian, Urdu, and Sanskrit literature (c. 1735) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Chitarman II (Indian, c. 1680–с. 1750).

The work and its context

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

The figure of Joseph, identified by his halo, sits in the center near the top of this painting of heroes and heroines of ten different Persian, Urdu, and Sanskrit romances. The depicted scene occurs after Joseph has been purchased by Zulaykha in Egypt. Zulaykha, wishing to show him off to her friends and acquaintances, invites them to her home where she supplies oranges and knives. When the women see Joseph, they all are so distracted by his divine beauty that they accidentally cut their hands while peeling their oranges, but remain mesmerized by his appearance. The dramatic scene in the center is from the Persian romance of Khusrau and Shirin, in which Farhad, a stonecutter who loved Shirin, threw himself to his death from a mountaintop after hearing news of Shirin’s death, falsely sent to him from his rival Khusrau. The emaciated Majnun is in the lower right corner. Every vignette has been identified with a tiny Persian inscription.

Object facts

• Title: Lovers and beloveds: A composite of scenes from Persian, Urdu, and Sanskrit literature
• Date: c. 1735
• Creator attribution: Chitarman II (Indian, c. 1680–с. 1750)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: Gum tempera and gold on paper
• Dimensions: Painting: 41.2 x 29.6 cm (16 1/4 x 11 5/8 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art - Mughal
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 2013.345

A detail from the museum

Below the bearded poet Hafiz is the woman he loved; her name was Stick of Candy.

Collection credit

Gift in honor of Madeline Neves Clapp; Gift of Mrs. Henry White Cannon by exchange; Bequest of Louise T. Cooper; Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund; From the Catherine and Ralph Benkaim Collection

Further reading listed by the museum

• Markel, Stephen, Tushara Bindu Gude, and Muzaffar Alam. India's Fabled City: The Art of Courtly Lucknow. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2010.
• Mace, Sonya Rhie, Mohsen Ashtiany, Catherine Glynn, Pedro Moura Carvalho, Marcus Fraser, and Ruby Lal. Mughal Paintings: Art and Stories: the Cleveland Museum of Art. London: D Giles Limited, 2016.

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.