The internet has been bamboozled by a 162-year-old painting where a woman appears to be holding a smartphone.
Take a look at Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller’s “The Expected One” and you’ll immediately see a woman in the center of the painting walking through a scenic landscape to a man awaiting in the bushes, holding a pink flower.
Through a 21st-century lens, it seems as though the woman is scrolling through her iPhone while on her walk. But that obviously wouldn’t make any sense since the iPhone was released in 2007 and the painting was completed in 1860.
But according to art critics, there’s a simple explanation to the illusion.
The woman is said to be reading a prayer book during her stroll rather than browsing social media.
“The girl in this Waldmüller painting is not playing with her new iPhone X, but is off to church holding a little prayer book in her hands,” Gerald Weinpolter, CEO of the art agency austrian-paintings.at, told Motherboard.
Peter Russell, a retired local Glasgow government officer, was the first person to shine a light on the painting. He told Motherboard that he and his partner saw the painting this summer while visiting the Neue Pinakothek museum in Munich and had to know more about it.
He noted that the discussion around the piece shows just how much society has changed.
“What strikes me most is how much a change in technology has changed the interpretation of the painting, and in a way has leveraged its entire context,” Russell said.
“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.”
