The king’s handmaiden takes the prince away to the harem, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Eighth Night (c. 1560): Art, History and Details

The king’s handmaiden takes the prince away to the harem, 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:

An infatuated handmaiden, wearing a sari and veil, leads the young prince away from the seated king. The king and his viziers have agreed to send the prince to the harem in hopes that he will speak in a more relaxed environment.

Object facts

• Title: The king’s handmaiden takes the prince away to the harem, 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: Overall: 20.3 x 14 cm (8 x 5 1/2 in.); Painting only: 9.2 x 10 cm (3 5/8 x 3 15/16 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1962.279.55.a

A detail from the museum

The pink underdrawing is visible in places where the paint has chipped away.

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.