Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller, The Expected (1860)
A 162-year-old painting of a woman holding what looks like a smartphone has fooled the internet. If you look at "The Expected One" by Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller, you'll see a woman in the middle of the painting walking through a beautiful landscape toward a man waiting in the bushes with a pink flower.
From a 21st-century point of view, it looks like the woman is using her iPhone while walking. But since the iPhone came out in 2007 and the painting was finished in 1860, that makes no sense. But art critics say there's a simple way to explain the illusion.
On her walk, the woman is said to be reading a prayer book instead of checking social media. Gerald Weinpolter, CEO of the art agency Austrian-paintings.at, told that the girl in this Waldmüller painting is not playing with her new iPhone X. Instead, she is on her way to church with a small prayer book in her hands.
Peter Russell, who used to work for the city of Glasgow but has since retired, was the first person to shine a light on the painting. He told that he and his partner had seen the painting at the Neue Pinakothek museum in Munich this summer and had to find out more about it. He said that the fact that people are talking about the piece shows how much society has changed.
Selena Mattei