Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio, United States.
Location History:
The work was gifted to the Cleveland Museum of Art by Mrs. A. Dean Perry in 1962. Its accession number is 1962.279.95.a. The museum's online record does not provide a complete earlier ownership history for this particular painting.
This Mughal miniature illustrates an episode from the Tuti-nama, a collection of stories in which a talking parrot keeps Khujasta occupied by telling her a new tale each night. In this scene, Khujasta appears beside a green parrot housed in a decorative cage. She wears a red skirt and a light, transparent veil over her clothing. The surrounding architecture features patterned walls, ornamental tiles, and decorative textiles, creating a richly detailed interior setting.
The artist combines Indian figures and clothing with decorative elements influenced by Persian artistic traditions. The golden sky and geometric patterns contribute to the scene's distinctive appearance, while the arrangement of the carpet and furnishings emphasizes their surface decoration rather than realistic depth. The figure of Khujasta is shown in profile, allowing attention to be drawn to her clothing, gesture, and interaction with the bird.
The parrot is important to the story because it repeatedly delays Khujasta from leaving home by introducing stories that make her curious. In the larger narrative, these tales keep her occupied until morning, preventing her from meeting her lover secretly. The painting therefore captures a moment in a story about curiosity, persuasion, and the power of storytelling. Its careful patterns, vivid colours, and combination of Indian and Persian visual features make it a useful example of early Mughal book illustration.
The Parrot Addresses Khujasta at the Beginning of the Twelfth Night, from the Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot) is a Mughal miniature painting illustrating an episode from the Tuti nama, a collection of moral tales narrated by a parrot to a woman named Khujasta. The painting depicts the parrot addressing Khujasta at the beginning of the twelfth night of storytelling. According to the narrative, the parrot engages Khujasta through stories to prevent her from leaving home to meet her lover in the absence of her husband. The episode highlights the storytelling tradition's emphasis on wisdom, persuasion, and moral instruction. Formally, the miniature is characterised by its vivid colours, decorative detailing, and clear delineation of figures and architectural or natural elements. The composition arranges the figures and setting in a compact pictorial space, reflecting the early Mughal interest in narrative clarity and the representation of everyday life. The use of flat areas of colour, strong outlines, and carefully observed details also reveals the influence of Persian manuscript illustration alongside indigenous Indian painting traditions.
Share
By: Ruturaj Patil
This Mughal miniature represents an illustration from the Tuti-nama, a collection of tales, glorifying love between a woman and a parrot. The parrot narrates stories to Khujasta, distracting her from leaving her house every night. In the given piece, the woman is depicted next to a green parrot in a cage, wearing a red dress and a transparent veil over her clothes. The background of the painting is also filled with intricate patterns, creating unusual walls, tiles, and carpets. The author of the miniature skillfully combines Indian elements, such as the figure of the woman, with the Persian tradition of decorating clothes and interiors with patterns. The unusual coloration of the sky, the simplicity of the architectural structures, and the exaggerated decorative elements of the carpets and tiles fill the picture with an extraordinary sense of luxury and opulence. The woman is portrayed in profile, making her facial features less noticeable. Instead, the author focuses on the lines of the woman’s dress, her pose, and the bird’s cage. The parrot plays a major role in the story, as it narrates tales to Khujasta, distracting her from her lover. The frame of the painting demonstrates one of the episodes of the story, in which the bird tells the woman a long story, making her late for her secret meetings with her lover. The miniature became an outstanding picture because of its ability to convey the narrative of the story through intricate patterns and colors. Apart from that, the Mughal painter illustrates the beauty of the Indian world with the help of traditional carpets and clothing and manages to accentuate the luxuriousness of the environment in which the story takes place.
