The parrot addresses Khujasta at the beginning of the forty-seventh night, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Forty-seventh Night (c. 1560): Art, History and Details

The parrot addresses Khujasta at the beginning of the forty-seventh night, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Forty-seventh 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:

Against a brightly colored red and green background, Khujasta meets with Tuti the talking parrot. In order to keep her from leaving to visit her lover, the parrot tells Khujasta a moralizing story about four friends who were given magical shells by a wise man.

Object facts

• Title: The parrot addresses Khujasta at the beginning of the forty-seventh night, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Forty-seventh 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: 4.8 x 10.2 cm (1 7/8 x 4 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1962.279.300.b

A detail from the museum

The flat planes of bold color were favored by Indian artists before the time of Akbar.

Collection credit

Gift of Mrs. A. Dean Perry

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.