The two couples reach a foreign city where they make their home, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Thirty-third Night (c. 1560): Art, History and Details

The two couples reach a foreign city where they make their home, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Thirty-third 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:

Two pairs of lovers cross the bridge that leads to the gates of a new city. They have fled here together to live out the rest of their lives peacefully away from the machinations that would have otherwise kept them apart. Above the intricately patterned city walls, three men witness the group’s arrival.

Object facts

• Title: The two couples reach a foreign city where they make their home, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Thirty-third 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: 11.5 x 10.1 cm (4 1/2 x 4 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1962.279.222.b

A detail from the museum

The residents of the foreign city have much whiter skin than that of the protagonists.

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.
• "Permanent Collection Installations." Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 65, no. 2 (2025): 14–15.

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.