
Cleveland Museum of Art
The Brahman gives an account of his falling in love with the king of Babylon’s daughter to his friend, the magician, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Thirty-fifth Night
- Date
- c. 1560
- Medium
- gum tempera, ink, and gold on paper
- Culture
- Mughal India, court of Akbar (reigned 1556–1605)
- Department
- Indian and Southeast Asian Art
- Institution
- Cleveland Museum of Art
- Object ID
- 137641
From the Cleveland Museum of Art record
The figure in orange is a magician addressing a seated Brahman—a member of India’s Hindu priestly class—who has come to him for help. He and the princess of Babylon have fallen in love and want to be together, but she is sequestered in the palace harem. The magician transformed the Brahman into a woman, shown at left, walking toward the palace. This is an example of continuous narration, in which two scenes are depicted in the same picture plane. The garden with flowering trees in the background evokes the setting where the Brahman and the princess met and fell in love. Brahmans wear a sacred thread across their upper bodies, over the left shoulder and under the right arm.
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Provenance & credit
As published by the source institution. Coverage varies — not every institution's open-data feed includes ownership history.
- Credit line
- Gift of Mrs. A. Dean Perry
- Provenance
- ?–1959: Estate of Breckinridge Long [1881–1958], Bowie, MD | 1959–1962?: (Harry Burke Antiques, Philadelphia, PA) | 1959?–1962: (Bernard Brown Agency, Milwaukee, WI, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art. Purchased with funds from Mrs. A. Dean [Helen Wade Greene] Perry) | 1962–: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
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