Artwork Page for Tuti-Nama (Tales of a Parrot)

Details / Information for Tuti-Nama (Tales of a Parrot)

Tuti-Nama (Tales of a Parrot)

c. 1560

Mughal India, court of Akbar

(reigned 1556–1605)
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Medium
gum tempera, ink, and gold on paper
Measurements
Overall: 20.3 x 14 cm (8 x 5 1/2 in.)
Credit Line
Gift of Mrs. A. Dean Perry 1962.279
Public Domain
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Location
Not on view
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Did You Know?

Another Akbari Tuti-Nama, painted in the 1580s, is held in Dublin’s Chester Beatty Library.

Description

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.
A two-page manuscript spread features black, gold, and blue Persian calligraphy and a painting depicting a scene of a woman with light skin tone gesturing up to a green parrot in a square cage on our left. The woman wears a green top, orange-patterned trousers, and a sheer veil. Colorful, densely patterned flooring and walls extend behind them with a turret and trees visible beyond, in the upper right corner.

Tuti-Nama (Tales of a Parrot)

c. 1560

Mughal India, court of Akbar (reigned 1556–1605)

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