The monk returns the magic parrot to its rightful owner, the merchant, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Tenth Night (c. 1560): Art, History and Details

The monk returns the magic parrot to its rightful owner, the merchant, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Tenth Night (c. 1560) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Lalu (Indian, active mid-1500s).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

The monk, seated and wearing a leopard-skin cape across his shoulders, hands the talking, wooden parrot back to the merchant. Previously, the monk had gotten this parrot from the wife of the vizier’s son, who had it stolen from the merchant in order to win a wager.

Object facts

• Title: The monk returns the magic parrot to its rightful owner, the merchant, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Tenth Night
• Date: c. 1560
• Creator attribution: Lalu (Indian, active mid-1500s)
• Culture: Mughal India, court of Akbar (reigned 1556–1605)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: gum tempera, ink, and gold on paper
• Dimensions: Painting only: 5.8 x 10.2 cm (2 5/16 x 4 in.); Overall: 20 x 13.2 cm (7 7/8 x 5 3/16 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1962.279.84.a

A detail from the museum

Sufis carried a bowl for begging alms.

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.
• 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.