The handmaiden again pleads for the death of the prince, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Eighth Nightc. 1560
This early Mughal court scene is the last of the series in which the handmaiden lies about how the prince raped her, and she threatens to burn herself to death if he is not executed. More about this work
About this work
This early Mughal court scene is the last of the series in which the handmaiden lies about how the prince raped her, and she threatens to burn herself to death if he is not executed. She is depicted in the lower right of the composition. The seventh vizier in the green robe demanded that the prince be brought to the assembly, and he is led in, bound, his turban in disarray.
Text from the Cleveland Museum of Art.
How it was made
- Opaque watercolour
- Watercolour made opaque with white or chalk and laid in flat, even layers. Persian and Indian painters ground their colours from minerals, applied them with the finest brushes and burnished the finished page.
- Tempera
- Pigment bound with egg yolk. It dries in minutes and can’t be blended wet, so painters built up form with fine, hatched strokes. It was Europe’s main panel technique before oil.
- Ink on paper
- Ink made from soot and animal glue, ground with water on an inkstone. A single brush can give a hair-fine line or a broad wash, and nothing can be corrected.
Lalu
Indian, active mid-1500s
Rights and the museum’s record
Public domain. The Cleveland Museum of Art has dedicated this image to the public domain under CC0, so anyone may copy, adapt and use it, for any purpose, without asking. Our prints and files are reproductions made from the museum’s image; the museum doesn’t endorse them.
- Object number
- 1962.279.71.b
- Credit
- Courtesy of the Cleveland Museum of Art
- Type
- Painting
- Department
- Indian and Southeast Asian Art
- Licence
- CC0 1.0 Universal
- Museum record
- See it on the museum’s site
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Close in colour
