This may seem a little abstract, but it’s a detail from a 15th century painting of the Annunciation in Florence. The detail is of the Virgin Mary’s gown, with the Old Testament on her lap. The legend goes that Mary was reading the prophecy in the Old Testament (Isaiah) that the Messiah (Immanuel) would be born of a virgin. Actually, it doesn’t say ‘virgin’ but,  you get the idea. Anyway, this is what they thought. So the idea was that at the moment of the Annunciation, when the Archangel Gabriel tells Mary she is pregnant, she becomes the fulfillment of the very prophecy she just read. The thing I want to direct your attention to here, however, is the script that you can see in the gold trim of her gown. It looks like Arabic calligraphy. In 15th century Italy embroidered silks from Islamic lands were prized textiles, and some of them had Arabic writing on them. The Europeans couldn’t understand what the writing meant, but they thought it was an attractive design. So the painter, here, painted pseudo-Arabic designs in the Virgin’s cloak, imitating the designs in the Islamic textiles.