
Cleveland Museum of Art
The parrot addresses Khujasta at the beginning of the forty-third night, from a 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
- Object ID
- 137730
From the Cleveland Museum of Art record
In this brightly patterned scene, Khujasta prepares to leave for a clandestine rendezvous. However, she is stopped by Tuti the parrot, who tells her moralizing stories that last until sunrise. Multiple architectural spaces have been flattened as though they were made using paper cutouts. Khujasta stands on the pink tiled floor of a courtyard. Behind her the blue carpet on the floor of a covered porch has been tilted up vertically below the red tiled lower wall decor. Lattice windows reveal the darkness of night. The golden tile patterns above the protrusions of the pink stone roof appear to indicate the floor of the roof above. Khujasta holds a packet of paan for freshening the breath in her left hand.
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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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