Fragment of Silk Taffeta with “Rose and Nightingale” Motif

A luxurious textile like this would have been used for courtly robes or coats in Safavid Iran. The bird-and-flower motif is known as gul-u-bulbul in Persian, meaning “rose and nightingale.” The motif references the poetic image of a nightingale plaintively singing to an indifferent rose as a metaphor for unrequited human love as well as the soul’s desire for mystical union with the divine.