Three suitors fight amongst themselves for the hand of the devotee’s daughter, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Twentieth Night (c. 1560): Art, History and Details

Three suitors fight amongst themselves for the hand of the devotee’s daughter, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Twentieth 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:

In the foreground, three men brawl. Each was promised the hand of a religious man’s daughter, and each believed himself to be the worthiest suitor. The daughter, sitting in the chamber with her mother, is so upset by the conflict that she falls ill and appears to die. Her father, the devotee, sits in the background alongside his son.

Object facts

• Title: Three suitors fight amongst themselves for the hand of the devotee’s daughter, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Twentieth 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: 9.9 x 10 cm (3 7/8 x 3 15/16 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1962.279.144.b

A detail from the museum

Allah’s name is painted in a roundel on the wall, signaling the Muslim family’s devotion.

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.