The lover of Hamnaz, who has been hanged from the gallows, bites off her nose when she kisses him, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Twenty-fifth Night (c. 1560): Art, History and Details

The lover of Hamnaz, who has been hanged from the gallows, bites off her nose when she kisses him, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Twenty-fifth 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:

Hamnaz stands on a stool embracing her lover as he hangs. He has been put to death as punishment for being caught in their affair. Disfiguring her face serves as his final act of vengeance.

Object facts

• Title: The lover of Hamnaz, who has been hanged from the gallows, bites off her nose when she kisses him, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Twenty-fifth 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: 13.5 x 10.1 cm (5 5/16 x 4 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1962.279.177.a

A detail from the museum

The gallows originally had four legs, discernible under infrared light.

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.