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A woman mistakes a cow for the Angel of Death, from a Lights of Canopus (Anwar-i Suhaili) of Kashifi (Iranian, d. 1504)
c. 1610
- Medium
- Gum tempera on paper
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Painting: 19.7 x 10.2 cm (7 3/4 x 4 in.); Framed: 38.1 x 26.7 cm (15 x 10 1/2 in.)
- Culture
- Mughal India, court of Jahangir (1605–1627)
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Indian and Southeast Asian Art
- Credit line
- Gift of Michael Silver and Deborah Lader in memory of Rabbi Daniel Jeremy Silver
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its subject is for older viewers (war, death, the Passion, drink or the like). How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
In this gently colored, amply shaded painting, an ailing girl lies listless, eyes barely open, as an attendant fans her. A cow who got her head stuck in a pot has entered the yard in confusion. The girl’s mother, who had been weeping and praying to exchange her own life for the health of her daughter, thought the Angel of Death had come to take her. Pointing to heaven, the woman begs that her daughter be taken instead. Outside the gate, a wandering holy man dozes, indicating this scene takes place in the evening, and a calf annoys her mother as she eats.
