The Parrot Addresses Khujasta at the Beginning of the Thirteenth Night, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot) (c. 1560): Art, History and Details

The Parrot Addresses Khujasta at the Beginning of the Thirteenth Night, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot) (c. 1560) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Tara 1 (Indian, active 1550s-1590s).

The work and its context

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

Before Khujasta can leave to meet her lover, Tuti the talking parrot begins to tell her a story of the conference of eighty wise men and the infant prince who was judged by his musical tastes.

Object facts

• Title: The Parrot Addresses Khujasta at the Beginning of the Thirteenth Night, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot)
• Date: c. 1560
• Creator attribution: Tara 1 (Indian, active 1550s-1590s)
• 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: 8.6 x 10.5 cm (3 3/8 x 4 1/8 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1962.279.102.b

A detail from the museum

The bricks in the courtyard were originally painted orange.

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.