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The deceitful wife ejects the procuress after blackening her face, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Eighth Night
Shravana (Indian, active 1550s–c.1600)
c. 1560
- Medium
- gum tempera, ink, and gold on paper
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Overall: 20.3 x 14 cm (8 x 5 1/2 in.); Painting only: 10.5 x 10 cm (4 1/8 x 3 15/16 in.)
- Culture
- Mughal India, court of Akbar (reigned 1556–1605)
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Indian and Southeast Asian Art
- Credit line
- Gift of Mrs. A. Dean Perry
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
The lover of the unfaithful wife sent a female messenger to arrange for their rendezvous. In a false display of horror, the wily adulteress blackened the face of the messenger as though to disgrace her and threw her out of the house, ordering her to be dumped by the side of a canal. That act, however, was a coded message to her lover to meet at the dark of night at that same location. The Indian artist Shravana added the pink brick wall to lend a sense of depth and dimensionality to the scene.
