{"id":22343,"date":"2025-09-14T19:18:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-14T19:18:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/22343\/"},"modified":"2025-09-14T19:18:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-14T19:18:09","slug":"nike-trainer-spotted-in-17th-century-painting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/22343\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Nike trainer’ spotted in 17th century painting"},"content":{"rendered":"

A painting in the National Portrait Gallery<\/a> has gained attention after a mother and daughter couldn’t help but notice what appears to be modern-day footwear in the image – Nike<\/a> trainers, to be exact.<\/p>\n

As a result, it’s led people to speculate if the person in the painting is a “time traveller<\/a>“.<\/p>\n

Portrait of a Boy was painted by Dutch master Ferdinand Bol in the 17th century, which shows an eight-year-old boy standing in the foreground holding a goblet while resting his other hand on his hip.<\/p>\n

The child is wearing clothes of the time with black jacket and cape, a white shirt with ruffled sleeves, auburn socks and black boots.<\/p>\n

Well, that is until you take a closer look at the footwear to see what appears to be a white Nike “tick” logo on the side of the youngster’s left shoe. <\/p>\n

That in itself is pretty impossible considering the fact Nike was founded in 1964, with the portrait being painted 300 years before this.<\/p>\n

\"\"\/ Was the young boy hundreds of years ahead of his time?Sotheby\u2019s\/National Gallery <\/p>\n

This seemingly time travelling tick was spotted by Fiona Foskett, 57, who a visited to the London gallery with her daughter, Holly, 23.<\/p>\n

“I said to my daughter, ‘Hold on, is he wearing a pair of Nike trainers?'” Foskett told The Sun.<\/a><\/p>\n

“Looking at the age, he must have got his hands on the first pair of Nike trainers ever made. Or is he actually a time traveller?”<\/p>\n

A spokesman from the National Gallery told the publication: “We are delighted that this picture has been such a hit with our visitors.<\/p>\n

“It resonated with followers when we put out a Tweet asking people to see if they could spot a more ‘modern’ detail by taking a closer look at the shoes of the eight-year-old boy in the portrait.”<\/p>\n

It’s not the first time people have appeared to spot modern items in old works of art. A 150 year old painting appears to show a woman using an iPhone<\/a>, a painting from 1937 shows man using an ‘iPhone’<\/a> and an Ancient Greek statue showing ‘woman using laptop’ has people thinking time travel is real.<\/a><\/p>\n

This article was originally published on 20 May 2023<\/p>\n

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Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A painting in the National Portrait Gallery has gained attention after a mother and daughter couldn’t help but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22344,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[1228,442,498,499,500,501,156,4622,111,139,23279,69,3074,23278,23280],"class_list":{"0":"post-22343","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-art","9":"tag-arts","10":"tag-arts-and-design","11":"tag-artsanddesign","12":"tag-artsdesign","13":"tag-design","14":"tag-entertainment","15":"tag-national-portrait-gallery","16":"tag-new-zealand","17":"tag-newzealand","18":"tag-nike","19":"tag-nz","20":"tag-painting","21":"tag-time-travel","22":"tag-trainers"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22343\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}