The merchant Mansur departs on a sea voyage, leaving his wife behind, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Seventeenth Night (c. 1560): Art, History and Details

The merchant Mansur departs on a sea voyage, leaving his wife behind, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Seventeenth 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:

Mansur, a wealthy and successful merchant, prepares to leave home on a long and dangerous journey. He sits dressed in orange at the head of his ship alongside a group of assistants. His wife, renowned for her virtue and beauty, sees him off from her second-story chamber.

Object facts

• Title: The merchant Mansur departs on a sea voyage, leaving his wife behind, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Seventeenth 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: 9.7 x 10.1 cm (3 13/16 x 4 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1962.279.125.b

A detail from the museum

Thirteen fish are hidden in the dark waters beneath Mansur’s ship.

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.