The parrot laughs on hearing the Raja of Ujjain’s wife admire her beauty in a mirror, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot: Forty-sixth Night (c. 1560): Art, History and Details

The parrot laughs on hearing the Raja of Ujjain’s wife admire her beauty in a mirror, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot: Forty-sixth 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:

The raja’s wife claims to be the most beautiful woman in the world. The parrot laughs at her arrogance and tells them of a girl living in an underground kingdom whose beauty is incomparable. From the parrot’s words alone, the raja becomes obsessed with the girl and leaves to seek her company.

Object facts

• Title: The parrot laughs on hearing the Raja of Ujjain’s wife admire her beauty in a mirror, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot: Forty-sixth 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: 13.3 x 9.8 cm (5 1/4 x 3 7/8 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1962.279.292.b

A detail from the museum

The mirror that the raja’s wife is holding is painted with silver and would have once looked reflective but has since tarnished.

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.

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.