
Cleveland Museum of Art
A woman with two children, having abandoned her home, goes into the forest where she encounters a leopard, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Thirtieth 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
- 137577
From the Cleveland Museum of Art record
A woman described as ill-tempered and quarrelsome was beaten by her husband, so she fled with her children into the wilderness. A fearsome leopard approached them, hoping to carry the children away for a meal. Thinking quickly, the woman offered the leopard one of her children and half of her own body, stating that a lion has staked claim to the other half. Fearing rivalry with the lion, the leopard quickly fled. The gold sky and arid landscape in shades of pink and blue derive from painting styles of northwestern Iran, but the woman’s dress is the tied blouse and wrapped skirt of India. The woman is described as bad-tempered, quarrelsome, sharp-tongued, gossipy, and peevish.
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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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