The suitors take the devotee’s daughter out of her tomb after breaking it open, when the physician discovers she is still alive, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Twentieth Night (c. 1560): Art, H

The suitors take the devotee’s daughter out of her tomb after breaking it open, when the physician discovers she is still alive, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Twentieth 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 three suitors hold the lifeless body of the woman they intended to marry. She is wrapped in a diaphanous burial shroud, and her tomb stands empty in the background. When the suitors realize that the woman is not dead, they proceed to attempt to revive her.

Object facts

• Title: The suitors take the devotee’s daughter out of her tomb after breaking it open, when the physician discovers she is still alive, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Twentieth 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: 12.6 x 10.7 cm (4 15/16 x 4 3/16 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1962.279.146.a

A detail from the museum

The three pairs of birds in the tree and pond allude to the three suitors.

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.