The young man changes himself to look like Mansur, and thus inveigles himself into the bed of Mansur’s wife, but is put off by her, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Seventeenth Night (c. 1560): A

The young man changes himself to look like Mansur, and thus inveigles himself into the bed of Mansur’s wife, but is put off by her, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Seventeenth 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:

The lascivious young man who magically transformed himself to have the appearance of Mansur the merchant kneels on an arabesque-patterned bed with Mansur’s wife. Although he looks like her husband, his actions and personality are different, so the woman suspects something is amiss and feigns illness to stall the imposter’s advances.

Object facts

• Title: The young man changes himself to look like Mansur, and thus inveigles himself into the bed of Mansur’s wife, but is put off by her, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Seventeenth 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: 6.6 x 10.2 cm (2 5/8 x 4 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1962.279.128.b

A detail from the museum

The imposter offers the woman a packet of paan to freshen her breath before love play.

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.

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.