Why Is There a Phone in This 1860 Painting?

A girl walks down a forest path with her head bowed over a small dark rectangle in her hands, and millions of people online have looked at her and seen a smartphone. The painting is The Expected One by the Austrian artist Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller, and it was made around 1860. In this video, we look at what she is really holding, why a young man is hiding beside the path with a rose, and why a painter capable of extraordinary detail left the object in her hands so vague. Along the way, we cover Tim Cook's own "iPhone" sighting in a Dutch painting from 1670, and the story of how Waldmüller turned the Vienna art world against him. Tell me in the comments whether you saw a phone or a book the first time you looked. Artworks featured: Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller, Die Erwartete (The Expected One), 1850, Neue Pinakothek, Munich Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller, Waldmüller's Aunt with Prayer Book, 1818/1819, private collection Pieter de Hooch, Man Handing a Letter to a Woman in the Entrance Hall of a House, 1670, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam