The woman conversing with her children, as the leopard returns, egged on by a fox who is tied to his leg, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Thirtieth Night (c. 1560): Art, History and Details

The woman conversing with her children, as the leopard returns, egged on by a fox who is tied to his leg, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Thirtieth 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:

For the second time, the leopard appears in hopes of eating the woman and her children. Previously, he had fled after falling for the woman’s clever trick. He returns with the fox’s encouragement but is tricked again by the shrewd woman who convinces him that she is a hyena in human form.

Object facts

• Title: The woman conversing with her children, as the leopard returns, egged on by a fox who is tied to his leg, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Thirtieth 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.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1962.279.202.a

A detail from the museum

The large tree in the background is a plane tree, which is a type of sycamore.

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.
• Nakhshabī, Z̤iyāʼ al-Dīn, and Muhammed Ahmed Simsar, translator and editor. Tales of a Parrot = The Cleveland Museum of Art's Ṭūṭīnāma. Cleveland, OH: The Museum, 1978.
• 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.