A painting that hangs in a Munich gallery has become an unlikely internet sensation, because the young woman at its centre appears to be holding a smartphone. Some viewers insist it is proof that someone from the future slipped into the scene. The real explanation is much simpler, but the theory has been hard to shake.
A woman, a stranger and a mystery object
The artwork is called ‘The Expected One’ and was painted by Ferdinand George Waldmüller. It is on display at the Neue Pinakothek museum in Munich, Germany, where it has attracted a great deal of curiosity.
The scene is a gentle one. A man hides among the trees, holding up a flower as a woman walks towards him. Behind her, hills roll away into a green countryside, and a dirt path stretches out in front of her.
What catches the eye is the object in her hands. Her thumbs rest on it and her gaze is fixed downward. To many people, she looks like any modern woman you might pass on the street today, absorbed in her phone.
How the theory took off
The idea began to spread around 2017, when art lovers noticed the apparent smartphone and shared their discovery online. Others soon agreed that the object looked like an iPhone or another touchscreen device.
Peter Russel, a former Glasgow council worker, noticed the likeness while visiting the gallery. He said the way technology has changed has altered how we read the painting.
He explained: "The big change is that in 1850 or 1860, every single viewer would have identified the item that the girl is absorbed in as a hymnal or prayer book. Today, no one could fail to see the resemblance to the scene of a teenage girl absorbed in social media on their smartphone."
The twist
Apple did not launch the iPhone until 2007, and even the Nokia 9000 Communicator, the earliest gadget that could match her apparent typing motion, arrived in 1996.
In reality, the woman is holding a book and reading as she walks. Pocket-sized books were commonplace in that era. She is simply a young woman lost in her reading while an admirer waits to give her a flower.
Not the first time
This is not the only old painting to inspire such talk. In 2016, former Apple boss Tim Cook said he spotted an iPhone in a 350 year old painting during a visit to a museum in Amsterdam. It shows a man holding a rectangular item while a woman and a child look at it.
Both artworks have set off plenty of chatter about technology and time travel. Neither offers any real evidence, but they show how easily a modern eye can read the present into the past.
Where things stand
The painting still hangs in the Neue Pinakothek, and visitors continue to stop and stare at the woman on the path. Whether they see a prayer book or a phone says a lot about the age they live in.
Image credit: Hajotthu/Wikimedia Commons
Source: The Mirror US
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