<div class="description">
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 <em>gul-u-bulbul </em>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.</div>
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