Gerard Genette's theory of transtextuality is one of the most fundamental frameworks for analyzing the relationships between texts, which Genette formulates through five main categories: intertextuality, paratextuality, metatextuality, architextuality, and hypertextuality. Among these, hypertextuality - the relationship between an earlier text (the hypotext or pretext) and a later, derived text (the hypertext) - is especially productive for visual studies, because it makes it possible to trace how a motif is adapted, imitated, or transformed as it passes from one work and one era to another. In Iranian art, tile painting during the Qajar period moved far beyond a purely decorative function and became a narrative and discursive medium that visually reinterpreted literary, mythological, and epic traditions. Among the most frequently revisited of these narratives is Nezami's romance of Khosrow and Shirin, and in particular the celebrated scene of Khosrow watching Shirin bathing, a subject repeatedly reimagined across centuries.

This article offers a comparative study of the female motif in two renderings of this scene: a painting attributed to Sultan Mohammad of the Shiraz school of the Safavid period, preserved in a Khamsa manuscript, which serves as the pretext, and a polychrome bas-relief tile located on the entrance staircase of the Private Palace (Kakh-e Ekhtesasi) within the historic complex of the Golestan Palace in Tehran, from the Qajar period, serving as the hypertext. The research pursues three questions: What are the characteristics of the female motif in each work? What role did earlier texts and images play in shaping this motif? And according to which branch of Genette's transtextuality can the relationship between the two works best be analyzed? The study employs a qualitative, comparative method with a historical approach; data were collected through library and documentary sources, while images were obtained through photography, scanning, and digital archives. The works are analyzed on the basis of the visual principles and formal rules employed in their outward characteristics, using logical and analogical comparison of compositional structure, color, figure, costume, gaze, and setting. Comparative tables map the similarities and differences of each pictorial element, from the female figures and Khosrow to the horses, trees, and mountains of the setting.

The analysis shows that in the Safavid painting the scene unfolds within a complex, multilayered composition of spiraling movements, rich natural elements, and imaginary architecture. Shirin appears as a dignified, self-contained beloved whose body is never fully displayed: her form is veiled by soft lines, patterned garments, and the poetic texture of the landscape, so that feminine beauty is conveyed through visual allusion rather than exposure, in harmony with the mystical and ethical discourse of Persian painting. Khosrow remains a hidden observer at the margin of the scene, and the asymmetrical, multi-focal composition invites the viewer's active contemplation. In the Qajar tile, by contrast, background elements are reduced, the composition becomes centralized and circular, and Shirin - seated semi-nude on an architectural platform, three-quarter view, drying or arranging her hair - dominates the visual field. Her figure is defined by a black contour line, symmetrical facial features, large kohl-rimmed almond eyes, arched brows, and explicit makeup, while her downcast gaze, unlike the upward, communicative gaze of the Safavid Shirin, renders her a passive object of the spectator's look. Khosrow, no longer a concealed onlooker, enters the frame beside her, an active royal presence that reflects nineteenth-century European models of the male gaze and visual possession.

Interpreting these findings through Genette's framework, the study concludes that the relationship governing the two works is a transformative, not imitative, form of hypertextuality. While the overall narrative of the bathing scene remains constant, the form of representation, bodily posture, clothing, facial treatment, direction of the gaze, and style of execution undergo fundamental change, so that the Qajar tile constitutes a transformative reinterpretation of the Shiraz-school painting rather than a copy. The transition also involves a displacement of function in Genette's sense: the Safavid painting, produced in royal workshops for an elite audience, belonged to a private, contemplative visual culture, whereas the Qajar tile, installed in palace architecture and public-facing spaces, entered collective visual memory and mass consumption. Under the influence of Western aesthetics, lithography, photography, and the changing visual taste of the court and urban society, the female motif moves from a symbolic, veiled, and marginal presence toward a central, narrative, and power-representing role, shifting from mystical allegory to spectacular display and from acting subject to visible object. This transformation reflects deeper cultural, social, and ideological developments of Qajar Iran, including new discourses of gender, beauty, the body, and royal legitimacy. The study ultimately demonstrates that transtextual analysis, by linking formal and semantic examination to historical and discursive context, provides an effective interdisciplinary model for understanding processes of visual adaptation and meaning-making in Iranian art, and for rereading its pictorial heritage as a continuous chain of hypertextual transformations.