Tuti-Nama (Tales of a Parrot)

Cleveland Museum of Art

Tuti-Nama (Tales of a Parrot)

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

The Tuti-Nama , written in Persian in the early fourteenth century, contains a series of fifty-two moralizing tales told by a clever, talking parrot. Each story is intended to instruct Khujasta and distract her from an adulterous affair. The Cleveland Museum of Art’s copy of the manuscript was painted for Emperor Akbar (r. 1556–1605) and represents the origins of Mughal painting. Another Akbari Tuti-Nama, painted in the 1580s, is held in Dublin’s Chester Beatty Library.

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