The pious man’s son, now a king, reveals himself to his father; his nurse upbraids his unfaithful mother, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Fifty-second Night (c. 1560): Art, History and Details
The pious man’s son, now a king, reveals himself to his father; his nurse upbraids his unfaithful mother, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Fifty-second Night at the Cleveland Museum of Art: c. 1560, gum tempera, ink, and gold on paper.
The pious man’s son, now a king, reveals himself to his father; his nurse upbraids his unfaithful mother, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Fifty-second 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 young man throws himself at his overjoyed father’s feet. As a boy, he was nearly killed by his treacherous mother, who hoped to please her lover. The nurse, learning of her plan, took the child and fled to safety. In the intervening years, he killed a dragon, married a princess, and became a king. The king’s success is attributed to a magical, seven-colored bird’s head, which he ate as a child.
Object facts
- Title: The pious man’s son, now a king, reveals himself to his father; his nurse upbraids his unfaithful mother, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Fifty-second 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: 8.7 x 10 cm (3 7/16 x 3 15/16 in.)
- Collection: Indian Art
- Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
- Accession number: 1962.279.340.a
A detail from the museum
A corrosive pigment used on two of the vessels in the back wall has eaten through the paper.
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.
Sources
More in Lifestyle
Keep reading
