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

The Parrot Addresses Khujasta at the Beginning of the Twenty-seventh Night, form a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot) (c. 1560) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Khujasta prepares herself each night to secretly meet her new lover, but before she is able to leave, her pet parrot Tuti cleverly entices her to stay with the tantalizing beginnings of a story. Tuti’s telling of the story takes all night, and by the time he reaches the end, it is too late for her rendezvous. A bowl of paan, areca nuts wrapped in betel leaves, has been set out for chewing, freshening breath, and its various pleasurable effects.

Object facts

• Title: The Parrot Addresses Khujasta at the Beginning of the Twenty-seventh Night, form a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot)
• Date: c. 1560
• Culture: Mughal India, court of Akbar (reigned 1556–1605)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: gum tempera, ink, and gold on paper
• Dimensions: Painting only: 10.5 x 10 cm (4 1/8 x 3 15/16 in.); Overall: 20.1 x 15.3 cm (7 15/16 x 6 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1962.279.185.a

A detail from the museum

Khujasta has been drinking wine—evidenced by the bottles on the low table before her.

Collection credit

Gift of Mrs. A. Dean Perry

Further reading listed by the museum

• Seyller, John. “Overpainting in the Cleveland T̤ūtīnāma.” Artibus Asiae 52, no. 3/4 (1992): 283-318.
• Mace, Sonya Rhie, Mohsen Ashtiany, Catherine Glynn, Pedro Moura Carvalho, Marcus Fraser, and Ruby Lal. Mughal Paintings: Art and Stories: the Cleveland Museum of Art. London: D Giles Limited, 2016.

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.