The vizier’s son receives the magic wooden parrot from the wife of the merchant, who is drunk, and has a replica made by a carpenter, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Tenth Night (c. 1560): Art,

The vizier’s son receives the magic wooden parrot from the wife of the merchant, who is drunk, and has a replica made by a carpenter, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Tenth Night (c. 1560) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Lalu (Indian, active mid-1500s).

The work and its context

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

At right, the merchant lies drunk while the vizier’s son receives the parrot from the merchant’s wife, with whom he is having an affair. In the upper register, a skilled carpenter carves an exact replica of the parrot that the vizier’s son will later pass to the merchant’s wife.

Object facts

• Title: The vizier’s son receives the magic wooden parrot from the wife of the merchant, who is drunk, and has a replica made by a carpenter, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Tenth Night
• Date: c. 1560
• Creator attribution: Lalu (Indian, active mid-1500s)
• Culture: Mughal India, court of Akbar (reigned 1556–1605)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: gum tempera, ink, and gold on paper
• Dimensions: Painting only: 9.8 x 10.2 cm (3 7/8 x 4 in.); Overall: 20.1 x 13.2 cm (7 15/16 x 5 3/16 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1962.279.81.b

A detail from the museum

The long-necked bottles are full of liquor.

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.
• 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.