Smartphone-like object in 19th-century painting

A 19th-century painting has left many people confused with an object that looks exactly like a smartphone in the girl's hand.

The 1850s painting by Austrian artist Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller, displayed at the Neue Pinakothek in Munich, Germany, depicts a woman in 19th-century dress walking along a country path with her eyes fixed on an object that looks like a smartphone in her hand, according to Motherboard.

The person who discovered the puzzling detail in the painting, titled The Expected One, was retired civil servant Peter Russell.

In the painting, beside the woman leisurely walking on the dusty road, there is a man kneeling not far away, waiting for her to come closer with a pink flower in his hand. However, all the woman's attention is focused on the small rectangular object she is holding in her hand, an image reminiscent of smartphone addicts on the road today. In fact, the object is not a smartphone but a hymn book.

"What struck me most was the dramatic change in the way the painting was interpreted, which elevated the entire context. Around 1850 or 1860, people viewing the painting would have recognized the object the girl was looking at as a hymn book. Today, everyone would recognize the similarity between the scene in the painting and the image of a young woman engrossed in social media on her smartphone," Russell shared.

According to VNE