The king places the talisman on his sleeping wife, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Fiftieth Night (c. 1560): Art, History and Details

The king places the talisman on his sleeping wife, 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 king, believing that his wife has carried on an affair with a slave, acquires a talisman that will make her tell the truth. She reveals that the young man is not her lover, but her son from a former marriage. In reality, the talisman is not magic but is instead part of a plan to prove the wife’s innocence.

Object facts

• Title: The king places the talisman on his sleeping wife, 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: 11 x 10.8 cm (4 5/16 x 4 1/4 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1962.279.323.a

A detail from the museum

The king believes that the talisman is made of King Solomon’s amulets.

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.

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.