Cleveland Museum of Art

A woman mistakes a cow for the Angel of Death, from a Lights of Canopus (Anwar-i Suhaili) of Kashifi (Iranian, d. 1504)

Date: c. 1610
Medium: Gum tempera on paper
Culture: Mughal India, court of Jahangir (1605–1627)
Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
Institution: Cleveland Museum of Art

In this gently colored, amply shaded painting, an ailing girl lies listless, eyes barely open, as an attendant fans her. A cow who got her head stuck in a pot has entered the yard in confusion. The girl’s mother, who had been weeping and praying to exchange her own life for the health of her daughter, thought the Angel of Death had come to take her. Pointing to heaven, the woman begs that her daughter be taken instead. Outside the gate, a wandering holy man dozes, indicating this scene takes place in the evening, and a calf annoys her mother as she eats. A previous owner identified the scene as the first cesarean section.

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