AMERICANALMANAC (Alex Tanzer) - A 1937 painting went viral over a "smartphone" in the frame — historians say it's a mirror
A Depression-era mural depicting colonial Massachusetts has reignited online time-travel conspiracy theories after viewers claimed an Indigenous man in the painting appears to hold a modern smartphone, though a historian identified the object as a European trade mirror years ago. The painting, Mr Pynchon and the Settling of Springfield, was completed in 1937 by Italian-born […] The post A 1937 painting went viral over a "smartphone" in the frame — historians say it's a mirror appeared first on American Almanac .
A Depression-era mural depicting colonial Massachusetts has reignited online time-travel conspiracy theories after viewers claimed an Indigenous man in the painting appears to hold a modern smartphone, though a historian identified the object as a European trade mirror years ago. The painting, Mr Pynchon and the Settling of Springfield, was completed in 1937 by Italian-born artist Umberto Romano, who grew up in Springfield, Massachusetts. It is one of six New Deal-era murals depicting the city's history. The scene shows English colonist William Pynchon, Springfield's founder, trading with members of the Pocumtuc tribe in western Massachusetts during the 1630s. In the foreground, a Native man holds a small, flat, rectangular object and…Open