The tale of the three men trapped in a cave by a rolling boulder, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Thirty-second Night (c. 1560): Art, History and Details

The tale of the three men trapped in a cave by a rolling boulder, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Thirty-second Night (c. 1560) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Bihzad (Persian, active in India mid-1500s).

The work and its context

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

Three men kneel in the bowels of a dark cave where they have been trapped while seeking hidden treasure. Fearful and desperate, they suddenly hear a disembodied voice that orders them to confess their transgressions. As each man speaks, a portion of the boulder disappears, and they are ultimately freed.

Object facts

• Title: The tale of the three men trapped in a cave by a rolling boulder, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Thirty-second Night
• Date: c. 1560
• Creator attribution: Bihzad (Persian, active in India mid-1500s)
• Culture: Mughal India, court of Akbar (reigned 1556–1605)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: gum tempera, ink, and gold on paper
• Dimensions: Overall: 20 x 13.3 cm (7 7/8 x 5 1/4 in.); Painting only: 11.1 x 10.2 cm (4 3/8 x 4 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1962.279.215.a

A detail from the museum

This painting is attributed to Bihzad, the son of Abd al-Samad the Persian master of the Mughal court.

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, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1976.
• 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.