Window mode follows your eyes with your camera, in this browser only: no picture or position leaves your device.
Grotesque Dancers Performing
c. 1600
- Medium
- gum tempera, ink, and gold on paper
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Image: 16 x 9 cm (6 5/16 x 3 9/16 in.)
- Culture
- Mughal India
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Indian and Southeast Asian Art
- Credit line
- Andrew R. and Martha Holden Jennings Fund
- 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
This scene from an unidentified manuscript depicts entertainers at the Mughal court. The dancers appear to be from the fringes of society, and they may be intended to depict tribal people or semihuman nature spirits. One is dark skinned with small elephant ears and red-rimmed eyes, wearing a white tiger-skin pelt. The female dancer wears a collar of leaves; the male figure on the right has horns, wears bells, and carries an animal-headed club that appears to be made of bone. An exuberant orchestra provides musical and vocal accompaniment below. While not an imperial production, this painting may reference the Mughal emperor Akbar’s practice of welcoming a wide range of people from all regions and traditions to his court, since he was interested in understanding their customs.
