The tale of the three men trapped in a cave by a rolling boulder, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Thirty-second Nightc. 1560
Three men kneel in the bowels of a dark cave where they have been trapped while seeking hidden treasure. More about this work
About this work
Three men kneel in the bowels of a dark cave where they have been trapped while seeking hidden treasure. Fearful and desperate, they suddenly hear a disembodied voice that orders them to confess their transgressions. As each man speaks, a portion of the boulder disappears, and they are ultimately freed.
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.
Bihzad
Persian, active in India 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
- 1962.279.215.a
- 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
