The guard restores the son who falls at his mother’s feet, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Fiftieth Night (c. 1560): Art, History and Details

The guard restores the son who falls at his mother’s feet, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Fiftieth 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 princess of Rum is overjoyed to discover that her son is alive. The king had ordered the young man’s execution after wrongly believing him to be his wife’s lover. The guard, who spared the young man’s life, is generously rewarded for his kindness.

Object facts

• Title: The guard restores the son who falls at his mother’s feet, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Fiftieth 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: 10 x 10 cm (3 15/16 x 3 15/16 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1962.279.323.b

A detail from the museum

The garden is decorated with a row of alternating banana and cypress trees.

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.
• Chandra, Pramod, and Daniel J. Ehnbom. The Cleveland Tuti-Nama Manuscript and the Origins of Mughal Painting. [Cleveland]: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1976.

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.