Did an artist foretell the iPhone 350 years ago? Apple’s CEO seems to think so

[Could this man be the ultimate ‘early adopter’?/Mic]

Art - and it’s meaning - is open to interpretation, so the saying goes.

But it appears that Apple CEO Tim Cook is stretching that idiom to its limit.

At a start-up festival held this week in Amsterdam, Cook posed an interesting theory: could a 17th century painter have predicted the iPhone?

In his presentation at Startup Fest, Cook mentioned he had recently visited the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. While there, he stumbled upon a painting that showed a man entering a room where a lady is seated, along with a dog.

From his perspective, Cook says he noticed the man, apparently, holding something flat, rectangular and big enough to fit in a person’s palm.

Moreover, the man’s gaze is downwards and he’s holding his thumb towards the bottom of the object, which makes him look like he’s sending a text message.

From a distance, Cook says, the item could certainly pass as an iPhone.

“I always thought I knew when the iPhone was invented, but now I’m not so sure anymore,” Cook told the crowd.

Not to pour cold water all over Cook’s theory, but the title of the painting in question is: ‘Man Handing a Letter to a Woman in the Entrance Hall of a House.’ It was painted by Pieter de Hooch in 1670.

Still, this isn’t the first time that something resembling an Apple product has been spotted in art that pre-dates the product’s existence. Some suspect that an iPad tablet was featured in Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 classic 2001: A Space Odyssey.

In the meantime, perhaps Cook could take up an art history class in his spare time.