The husband berates his wife for purchasing gravel instead of sugar, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Eighth Night (c. 1560): Art, History and Details

The husband berates his wife for purchasing gravel instead of sugar, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Eighth 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:

After a brief romantic encounter with a merchant, an unfaithful wife returns home to discover that the merchant's clerk replaced her sugar with gravel. Her husband demanded to know why she brought him a bag of dirt. In response, the wily adulteress concocts a quick lie that he readily accepts.

Object facts

• Title: The husband berates his wife for purchasing gravel instead of sugar, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Eighth Night
• Date: c. 1560
• Culture: Mughal India, court of Akbar (reigned 1556–1605)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: gum tempera, ink, and gold on paper
• Dimensions: Painting only: 11.7 x 10.2 cm (4 5/8 x 4 in.); Overall: 20 x 14.4 cm (7 7/8 x 5 11/16 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1962.279.70.b

A detail from the museum

The arched horizon, arabesque clouds, and mauve background are derived from earlier Indo-Persian painting traditions.

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