Nikfal, the fortune of the prince in the form of a woman, offers to accompany him, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Eighteenth Night (c. 1560): Art, History and Details

Nikfal, the fortune of the prince in the form of a woman, offers to accompany him, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Eighteenth 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:

The good fortune of the dervish that the prince purchased with his ring appeared to him in the form of a beautiful woman named Nikfal, meaning “Good Fortune.” The pair converse amiably in a grassy meadow full of deer under a lapis lazuli–blue sky with gold arabesque motifs. She wears Indian garments, while the prince is dressed as a Mughal in Central Asian garments. The story is said to take place in Zabulistan, in western Afghanistan.

Object facts

• Title: Nikfal, the fortune of the prince in the form of a woman, offers to accompany him, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Eighteenth 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: 11.2 x 10.3 cm (4 7/16 x 4 1/16 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1962.279.132.a

A detail from the museum

The animals in the background indicate that the scene is set in the wilderness.

Collection credit

Gift of Mrs. A. Dean Perry

Further reading listed by the museum

• Chandra, Pramod, and Daniel J. Ehnbom. The Cleveland Tuti-Nama Manuscript and the Origins of Mughal Painting. [Cleveland]: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1976.
• Nakhshabī, Z̤iyāʼ al-Dīn, and Muhammed Ahmed Simsar. Tales of a Parrot = The Cleveland Museum of Art's Ṭūṭīnāma. Cleveland: The Museum, 1978.
• 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.