Is this Native American man holding a smartphone?

The painting of a Native American man holding what looks like a smartphone wouldn't be that weird if it wasn't for a couple of details: it was painted 80 years ago and it is meant to depict a scene from around the year 1630.

Mr Pynchon and the Settling of Springfield is the name of the painting that is now taking over the internet, after Brian Anderson, a writer for Vice, noticed the idiosyncrasy.

"It's not clear exactly who this man is, but he might as well be popping off a selfie or thumbing through his news feed," Anderson wrote.

"He seems to gaze into the handheld device in such a way that renders all-too-familiar today, as if he's just read a bad tweet or recoiling from a Trump-related push notification from the Times. He would almost look unremarkable, if only he and the world around him existed at any point in the past decade."

There's a lot going on in the painting, which depicts a scene from around the year 1630.

The work of art was painted about 70 years before the first iPhone came out, having been finished in 1937 by Italian Umberto Romano.

It is meant to depict the arrival of the first settlers in New England, US, and hangs in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts State Office Building in Springfield.

Historians argue it is probably a mirror, or maybe a blade.

"The way the man holds it up, if indeed he's looking at his own face reflecting back at him, would certainly make sense," Anderson writes.

This would be a much better story if some expert could conform that it was, in fact, some kind of time-travelling iPhone but, alas, it is probably just a mirror.

A smartphone-shaped mirror.