Cleveland Museum of Art

Fragment of Silk Taffeta with “Rose and Nightingale” Motif

Date

1700s

Medium

Silk and metallic thread: taffeta, brocaded

Culture

Iran, Safavid period (1501–1722)

Department

Textiles

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

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.

The authoritative record is held by Cleveland Museum of Art. LinkedCulture surfaces this object and its connections; it does not alter institutional metadata.