The two cooks, who attempt to seduce the warrior’s loyal wife, are trapped by her in a cellar, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Fourth Night (c. 1560): Art, History and Details

The two cooks, who attempt to seduce the warrior’s loyal wife, are trapped by her in a cellar, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Fourth 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:

This story is about how wives who wish to be faithful will remain so, despite any seduction. This woman’s husband was a soldier, and when he was away on duty for months at a time, his master, the king, was intrigued at his wife’s faithfulness, proven by a magical rose garland that remained eternally fresh. The king wished to test her by sending his two handsome cooks to visit her and attempt to lure her into adultery. She tricked them into coming to her home and getting on a bed made of weak strings, positioned over a pit into which they fell. She kept them prisoner there until the king and her husband came to see what happened.

Object facts

• Title: The two cooks, who attempt to seduce the warrior’s loyal wife, are trapped by her in a cellar, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Fourth Night
• 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: 12.6 x 10.4 cm (4 15/16 x 4 1/8 in.); Overall: 20 x 13.6 cm (7 7/8 x 5 3/8 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1962.279.29.a

A detail from the museum

The cellar is represented in cross-section to reveal the scene inside.

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.