The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of December 18, 2025

Vertically oriented book page with two rows of Persian script above a painting of what appears a woman with light skin tone bathing. She looks up at another woman with light skin tone, orange skirt, and purple blouse bending over her and pointing above a hexagonal building on our right. On the roof, a man with light skin tone and orange robes watches. Behind the women sits another richly patterned and colored hexagonal building.

The son of the king of Babylon sees the Brahman transformed into a woman bathing and falls in love with her, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Thirty-fifth Night

c. 1560

Mughal India, court of Akbar

(reigned 1556–1605)
gum tempera, ink, and gold on paper
Overall: 20.3 x 14 cm (8 x 5 1/2 in.); Painting only: 14.5 x 10.2 cm (5 11/16 x 4 in.)
Gift of Mrs. A. Dean Perry 1962.279.234.a
Location: 242B Indian Painting

Did You Know?

The prince becomes so lovesick that he nearly dies.

Description

One day the king’s son caught sight of a woman washing her hair and fell in love with her. She was actually a Brahmin, a Hindu priest, who had a magic pearl of transformation that allowed him to live in the women’s quarters with his lover, the princess. The princess gestures in alarm, as she realizes her brother has fallen for her lover. Another popular subject that we see in the Tuti-Nama and in later painting is women bathing in a pool. Women bathing also appear in Krishna sporting with the gopis, from the early Bhagavata Purana, CMA 1971.171. Note how the Mughal handling of water with gentle swirls differs from the concentric circles in Krishna sporting with the gopis.
  • ?–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
    Provenance Footnotes
    1 Samuel Miller Breckinridge Long (May 16, 1881–September 26, 1958) was an American diplomat and politician, who served in the administrations of Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Long is largely remembered for his obstructionist role as the Assistant Secretary of State responsible for granting refugee visas during World War II. His interests included the collection of antiques, paintings and American ship models. He maintained a stable of Thoroughbred race horses and was a director of the Laurel Park Racecourse in Laurel, Maryland, and he enjoyed fox hunting, fishing, and sailing.
  • Chandra, Pramod, and Daniel J. Ehnbom. The Cleveland Tuti-Nama Manuscript and the Origins of Mughal Painting. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1976. pp. 79, 137
  • Indian Painting of the 1500s: Continuities and Transformations. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (March 15, 2025-January 11, 2026).
    Indian Gallery 242 Rotation – April-November 2018. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (April 2-November 18, 2018).
  • {{cite web|title=The son of the king of Babylon sees the Brahman transformed into a woman bathing and falls in love with her, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Thirty-fifth Night|url=false|author=|year=c. 1560|access-date=18 December 2025|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1962.279.234.a